The first Conservative Budget for 19 years sees ‘Osborne unbound’, writes Chris Sanger (EY) in Tax Journal's special edition. This was ‘a reforming Budget’ which sets out plans for a lower tax future ‘but boosts the exchequer’s coffers greatly in the short term’.
It was also ‘a surprisingly big Budget for big business’, reports Dominic Robertson (Slaughter and May). The unexpected announcement of further cuts to corporation tax is offset by a requirement for larger businesses to pay up early. And there is to be a tougher CFC regime, too.
On the compliance and enforcement front, not much was genuinely new ‘except for the rhetoric’, notes James Bullock (Pinsent Masons). The promised £5bn clampdown on avoidance and evasion is expanded to tackle ‘imbalances’ in the tax system, such as dividend taxation. ‘One wonders which of today’s tax reliefs will be tomorrow’s “distortions”’, says David Whiscombe (BKL Tax).
Changes to the non-dom rules were widely expected, but the scale of reform surprised many. There were some popular measures for Middle England - but, as Sue Laing (Boodle Hatfield) observes, ‘the chancellor giveth but he also taketh away’.
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