Emergency Budget: comment from industry - a difficult balance

The emergency Budget was always going to be a difficult balance between establishing an environment for economic growth and demonstrating a credible plan for reducing the deficit. While the pain of tax rises fed through to business in the form of a VAT hike and a bank levy the Chancellor clearly felt the need to stimulate the private sector through significant corporate tax rate reductions. Such a move on the CT rate reflects both an understanding that the UK must compete for mobile investment in the global market place and perhaps a more general belief that taxing consumption rather than business profits provides greater stability and certainty of tax revenues.

Business’ reception is generally positive although there are more details of the road map to come in the autumn and a number of outstanding matters are yet to be resolved before the corporate tax framework can be completed...