34 Things Entrepreneurs Need To know About From October’s Budget

27/11/18

Co-founder and Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurs, Matt Smith has kindly highlighted key points from Philip Hammond’s recent Budget, which we believe to be extremely useful for entrepreneurs and business owners. The following points draw attention to points such as VAT thresholds, Start-up loans, and the National Living Wage.

• Income tax allowances increasing to £12.5k and £50k from April 2019
• IR35 tightening to extend to medium and large firms from April 2020
• Employment Allowance (£3k off NI bill) now limited to companies with <£100k turnover
• Corporation tax on schedule to fall to 17% in 2020
• Annual investment allowance raised from £200k to £1m for two years
• Entrepreneurs’ relief qualifying period doubled to two years
• Digital services tax targeting tech giants (£500m+ revenue) from April 2020 2% on UK turnover
• Business rates until 2021 to be cut by 1/3 for properties with rateable value <£51k -£650m
• Future High Streets Fund to support sustainable transformation of high streets
• VAT threshold will remain at £85k until April 2022
• Further tightening of Entrepreneurs’ Relief and R&D tax relief
• £240m for the six regional mayors for transport investment
• £200m for fibre internet in rural locations
• Office for AI to review how government can use AI to drive productivity
• Centre for Data Ethics & Innovation to study bias in algorithms
• £150m for Turing AI Fellowships to bring global researchers to UK
• £115m to Digital Catapult
• £120m to Strength in Places Fund to support clusters of science and innovation excellence
• UK Export Finance Direct Lending Facility increased to £2bn between 2020 and 2022
• £120m to fund UK Festival of Innovation and Creativity
• Small Business Leadership Programme, delivered by business schools and businesses, to train 2,000 business owners in 2019/20 and 10,000 per year by 2025 (no funding announced)
• £25m to boost Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, funding an additional 200 graduates
• £20m in 19/20 to support local peer-to-peer support networks for business leaders
• Start Up Loans extended to 2021
• British Business Bank to support pension funds to invest in patient capital
• Intellectual Property Office to pilot new offer to help businesses secure high-quality valuations
• Employers can now transfer 25% of Apprenticeship Levy to pay for apprenticeships in their supply chains
• Apprenticeship co-investment rate to be halved to 5% for small businesses
• £100m to launch National Retraining Scheme
• £5m to support up to 10 new University Enterprise Zones
• £10m competitive fund for locally-led proposals for new Development Corporations
• National Living Wage to increase by 4.9% to £8.21 from April 2019
• New Enterprise Allowance will continue beyond April 2019

Image credit: HM treasury