Jeremy Hunt delivered his Spring 2024 budget today.

Here are some of the key points we made from today’s announcement.
As always the devil is in the details, the Finance Bill will be published next Thursday which should provide further clarity.

Key Points

VAT

• The VAT registration threshold will be increased from £85,000 to £90,000 from April 2024. The first increase to the VAT registration threshold in seven years. Remember the threshold is on a rolling 12 month basis, not a tax, accounts or calendar year.

Savings

• A new British ISA will allow an additional £5,000 annual investment in UK equity. This allowance will be on top of the existing ISA allowance.
• To help people save, a new British Savings Bond, delivered through NS&I, will offer a guaranteed rate, fixed for three years.

Vaping, tobacco, alcohol and fuel

• An excise duty will be introduced on vaping in October 2026.
• Likewise a one off increase for tobacco at the same time.
• Another freezing of Alcohol duty until February 2025
• Fuel duty will remain frozen for another 12 months. It has been frozen since 2011.

Property tax

• Higher rate of property capital gains tax will be reduced from 28% to 24%.
• The tax relief for holiday lets has been scrapped to improve the number of properties available for long term rental by local people.
• Stamp duty relief for people who purchase more than one dwelling in a single transaction, known as Multiple Dwellings Relief, is to be scrapped.

Non-dom tax status

• Hunt announces he will abolish the current system for non-doms and replace it with a residency based system.
• From April 2025 new UK arrivals will not have to pay any tax on foreign income for four years.

Child Benefit Charge

• With aims to end the unfairness of the High income benefit charge (HIBC), a consultation will be announced to move the HICBC to a household income charge from April 2026.
• From April 2024 the HICBC threshold will be increased this April from £50,000 to £60,000.
• The top of the taper will also therefore increase from £60,000 to £80,000

National insurance

• Simple fairer tax system for employment – reducing the penalty on work to help more people back into employment.
• Hunt announces that from April 6 employee national insurance will be cut by another 2p from 10% to 8% and self employed national insurance will be cut from 8% to 6%.
• Seemed to suggest that a long-term aim may be to merge NICs with income tax.

You can read more about the rest of today’s announcements here