This year’s Budget Speech was the first to be delivered on a Monday since 1962. It had been suggested that the reason for this was so that the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not have to perform after PMQs on Wednesday, October 31, thus avoiding inevitable newspaper references to horrors which too close an association with Halloween would have provoked.
But, Charles Linaker, a tax partner with UNW, which has a dedicated Dental Business Unit headed by Alan Suggett, says that Philip Hammond need not have worried because, as it turned out, none of the pre-Budget horror warnings came to pass.
In the run up to the Budget, there was speculation that pension tax reliefs would be attacked, that Capital Gains Tax Entrepreneurs’ Relief might be abolished and that private schools would have to charge VAT on their fees. All of this proved unfounded.
Nor, despite continuing uncertainty over Brexit, did Hammond attempt to postpone or reverse measures announced previously. Dentists who operate via limited companies might have expected a reversal or, at least, a freeze on corporation tax rates, a measure which would have had the added merit of being difficult for Labour to oppose. But, both the current reduced rate of 19 per cent and the further reduction to 17 per cent from April 1 2020 were confirmed.
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