Budget Summary March 2014
Following on from George Osborne’s Budget of 19 March, please find below a brief summary of the key announcements. Many of the changes revealed were re-announcements from the Autumn Statement of little more than three months ago. Nevertheless, the improving economic landscape did allow the Chancellor to spring a few surprises.
You can find our full 2014 budget summary by following this link: JoshuaLeighandCo-BudgetSummary2014PDF
The Budget highlights include:
- Radical reform of pensions, effectively introducing flexible drawdown for all defined contribution schemes.
- Major relaxations to the rules for turning small pension pots into cash lump sums.
- Reform of ISAs, with a new £15,000 annual contribution limit and full transferability in both directions between stocks and shares and cash.
- The savings tax rate reduced from 10% to 0% and the savings rate band increased to £5,000, both from 2015/16.
- The personal allowance is increased to £10,000 for 2014/15 and to £10,500 for 2015/16, with small reductions in the basic rate band for both years.
- The transferable tax allowance for married couples is set at £1,050 for 2015/16.
- The annual investment allowance (AIA) is doubled to £500,000 and there is a one-year extension of the higher AIA to 31 December 2015.
- Seed enterprise investment scheme (SEIS) is made permanent and new rules are introduced for venture capital trusts (VCTs) and enterprise investment schemes (EISs).
- Higher premium bond investment limits and, from January 2015, a new series of National Savings & Investments fixed rate bonds for people aged 65 and over.
To view or download our 2014 Budget Summary PDF, just click on the image below:
