Very different ‘budgets’ with very different reactions!

• The last Chancellor who signalled nothing about his ‘mini-Budget’ and growth stimulating plan shocked markets, causing the collapse of the UK cabinet.
• Our current Chancellor, who ran a campaign of expectation management has resulted in a general mood of relief that the increase in personal and corporate taxes were not higher.

Certainly, the market reaction yesterday was negligible despite the amount of money that will be removed from growth stimulation by concurrent tax rises and spending cuts to reduce the government’s deficit.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt unveiled his Autumn Statement yesterday that laid out his plans for the economy. Full details are available here.

What might the Autumn Statement mean for your personal wealth planning? Although being confiscatory of both income earned and growth of your wealth, it did not make any fundamental changes, such as mapping capital gains tax to income tax levels as was rumoured. Albeit allowances for capital gains and dividends reduce, there remains considerable scope to organise one’s finances across a host of tax wrappers to ensure the investments you hold deliver you a return in the most tax optimised way. The Autumn Statement reinforced the need to be aware of every allowance across all members of the family, with ongoing and personalised sound financial planning.

The legitimate organisation of your wealth into a strategy that minimises your personal tax burden is a course that all individuals should consider and plan for. There are many simple statutory allowances available for you to use to ensure you maximise income and gains from your investments to grow your wealth – this is our ‘Tax Optimisation Strategy’.

If you want to check you are maximising all your and your family’s allowances as set out below, please get in touch.

• Personal savings allowances
• ISA allowances
• Pension contributions, lifetime and tax-free cash allowances
• Your partner’s pension allowance – even if they are not working
• Capital gains tax allowances
• Dividend allowances
• A lower earning partner’s personal allowance and basic rate tax allowance
• VCT & EIS tax reliefs (where appropriate)
• Tax deferred compounding through offshore bonds
• Your children’s Junior ISA and Junior SIPP allowances

If you feel we can help you or any member of your family reduce the amount of tax paid on income, growth or an inheritance, please contact your adviser, who is always available to assist.

 

The contents of the article have been prepared solely for information purposes. The article contains information on financial products and services and such information is designed for and addressed solely to individuals seeking generic industry information. Taxation depends on your individual circumstances and may be subject to future change.