Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics…
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics… Just a couple of minutes into Jeremy Hunt’s Spring Budget 2024 speech, Benjamin Disraeli’s/Mark Twain’s title quote came careering into my mind. Listening to him reeling off the Tory ‘achievements’ since he and Rishi had taken office as the next PM/Chancellor pairing off the rank, you would imagine that the UK was buoyant and everything in the garden was rosy, rather than currently being in recession. Keir Starmer’s response then used the same data to argue that the Government was the worst since World War II …
As ever, in amongst all the announcements I looked out for measures that directly impact my areas of work and expertise. I will leave the other headlines for my colleagues to discuss.
VAT
A surprise announcement that the registration threshold is to rise to £90,000 from £85,000, a level which has been in existence since April 2017. How much difference that will make for small businesses is open to doubt. Realistically, it will only really help businesses whose customers are individuals unable to recover any VAT charged, and who are just coming up to the existing turnover level. Even that may well only be a temporary relief given the levels of inflation currently.
Full Expensing of Leased Assets
Full expensing was announced previously to take over from the 130% Super Deduction within the capital allowance regime. Historically, leased assets have either fallen outside capital allowances or claims restricted.
At the moment there is no real detail of what Jeremy Hunt meant by this announcement, other than saying it would only be brought in when financially viable and further information would be released in the near future. Presumably this will mean the lessee will be the taxable entity that benefits from such a claim but where will that leave the lessor if so?
I am always happy to answer any questions you may have – get in touch in the usual way.