Autumn Statement: The Follow Up
30th November 2023
Autumn Statement: The Follow Up
The Chancellor used his 2023 Autumn Statement to ‘go for growth’. He has used increased tax receipts from better-than-expected economic performance to fund a headline-grabbing 110 growth-promoting measures. Highlights include making permanent the ‘full expensing’ capital allowance, R&D tax credit reforms and business rates support for small businesses.
The Chancellor’s drive to ‘make work pay’ has taken the form of cuts to National Insurance contributions for both the employed and self-employed and an increase in the National Living Wage.
The key announcements ad ‘takeaways’ from the Chancellor’s statement are summarised below:
- Class 1 employees National Insurance contributions cut by 2% from January 2024.
- Class 2 abolished for the self-employed and Class 4 National Insurance contributions cut by 1% from April 2024.
- National Living Wage to increase by 9.8% to £11.44 an hour.
- Capital Allowances full expensing made permanent.
- R&D tax credits schemes merged from April 2024, lowering the rate for loss-making businesses in the merged scheme to 19%, and reducing the intensity threshold for loss making SMEs to 30%.
- Extending Investment Zones and Freeports incentives.
- Pension triple lock – basic state pension increasing by 8.5% to £221.20 a week.
- 75% discount on business rates for retail, hospitality and leisure companies.
- Small businesses rates multiplier frozen for a year.
- Universal Credit and other benefits to increase by 6.7% from April 2024.
- Alcohol duty frozen until 1 August 2024, but not tobacco duty.
Get In Touch
Please do not hesitate to get in touch with your usual contact or your local Whitings LLP office if you would like to discuss any of these announcements in further detail or to discuss your accountancy or tax affairs overall.
Disclaimer - All information in this post was correct at time of writing.
