Post Election Budget – changes ahead?
18/05/2010
The Conservatives have followed through on their election pledge to present a Budget soon after gaining power and it has been announced that the coalition government will present their emergency Budget on 22 June.
The fact that we have a coalition government whose members had varying tax measures within their respective manifestos does not make the job of predicting what this Budget may contain very easy, and it is likely several compromises on tax policy will be needed in order to bridge the gap between the two parties. Many commentators however are agreed that Capital Gains Tax (CGT) will be heavily affected.
It is expected that tax on ‘non-business' assets will increase in order to fund the Liberal Democrats promise to raise the personal allowance threshold to £10,000 and the current 18% CGT rate could potentially increase to a maximum of 50% with effect from Budget Day. Whilst reliefs have been promised for business assets, the overall costs of disposing of capital assets would increase significantly if these predictions came true.
Obviously none of these changes are guaranteed to happen but if you are planning to dispose of assets soon and are concerned about how any changes may affect you please get in touch with us as soon as possible.