Budget
Latest
Budget
2012 Tax Allowances:
These
changes will in the main come into effect from the April 1st and 6th
2013 onwards.
Personal
income tax allowance will rise to £9,205 from 6th April 2013
and the 50p top rate of tax will be cut to 45p.
Age-related
allowances will be removed for new pensioners who reach 65 years of
age after 6th April 2013, and replaced with a single personal allowance
for all.
Allowances
for those already of pension age to be frozen ( includes all pensioners
who will become 65 before 6th April 2013).
Child
Benefit:
Will be phased out when someone in a household has an income of more
than £50,000. It will fall by 1% for every £100 earned
over £50,000. Only those earning more than £60,000 will
lose the entire benefit. Households will be sent a questionnaire and
the reduction in child benefit will be managed by the self assessment
system, which will put more people back into self assessment.
Stamp
duty:
From midnight 21st March 2012, new stamp duty level of 7% for homes
worth more than £2m. Any such homes bought through companies
will pay 15%.
Changes
announced last years which come into effect April 2012
Tax
Allowance:
For individuals aged under 65, the allowance will rise by £630
on 6th April to £8,105 for the 2012-13 tax year. The upper threshold
of the basic rate will fall by £630 to £34,370 from 6th
April.
For
65 to 74 year-olds, the personal allowance will rise from £9,940
to £10,500. For 75 year-olds and over, the allowance will rise
from £10,090 to £10,660.
The
personal allowance gradually reduces, regardless of age, with income
above £100,000.
Inheritance
tax:
The £325,000 threshold for tax free inheritance remains
unchanged, but from April, the rate of inheritance tax for amounts
over £325,000 will be cut from 40% to 36% for estates that leave
10% or more to charity.
Stamp
Duty:
The 1% stamp duty rate for first-time buyers, on properties costing
between £125,000 and £250,000, is being reintroduced on
24th March.
ISAs:
From April 2012, the allowance will rise to £11,280. Up to £5,640
of this can be saved in cash with one ISA provider. The remainder
can be invested in stocks and shares with either the same or a different
ISA provider.
Pensions:
The full basic state pension will rise by £5.30 to £107.45
a week in April 2012. For private pensions, a lifetime allowance for
tax relief on pension savings, of £1.5m, will be introduced.
Within
the Budget 2012 there were a few elements of any interest to small
business, the headline grabbing announcement of a fall in corporation
tax is only for large companies, with the small business rate staying
at 20%.
Tax breaks for TV production
A tax
credit scheme for TV production and animation firms is to be introduced,
in a bid to keep creative talent in Britain.
Chancellor
George Osborne announced the plans in Parliament as part of the new
Budget for 2012.
Mr Osborne
said it was the government's "determined policy" to keep
Wallace and Gromit animators Aardman in Britain.
Last
month, Aardman bosses admitted they had been considering moving production
abroad where it was cheaper.
In reaction
to the news, Aardman said the tax credit would be "transformational
for our industry".
There
has been a dramatic decline on UK television of home produced animation
and hopefully this will
reverse that trend and create thousands of UK jobs and result in a
long term financial gain the for the UK.
Lobby
group Animation UK had been urging Mr Osborne to consider introducing
tax breaks, as it believed production was at risk of disappearing
from the UK completely.
Mr Osborne
said he hoped the changes would prevent that from happening, not just
for animators but for high-end drama productions.
Recent
shows, such as The Tudors, Camelot and the Julian Fellowes' drama
Titanic, were all made abroad to take advantage of tax incentives
in other countries.
Overseas
animators have long received support from their governments and hopefully
now our industry will be able to compete on a level playing field.
The
return on this relatively small investment from the Government will
significantly benefit the UK's economy, generating jobs and growth,
boosting tourism and giving the UK taxpayer great value for money.
In 2009,
exports of children's TV programmes that were made in the UK were
worth £150m, according to the Department of Culture Media and
Sport.
And
the UK is the second biggest exporter of television content in the
world, with exports worth more than £1.3 billion per year.
Mr Osborne's
tax break proposals will be subject to state aid approval and a consultation
process, but could be introduced by April 2013.
The
chancellor also said there were plans to improve technology in Britain,
which will include delivering "super fast broadband" to
90% of the population across 10 of the country's leading cities.
