Chancellor George Osborne delivered his Autumn Statement 2014 to Parliament on 3 December last year. Much of the commentary focused on weak public sector finances data in the context of strong GDP and employment growth.<\/p>\n
While the Autumn Statement 2014 was viewed by many as representing a political success for the Chancellor, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR)’s forecasts were seen as providing a sober reminder of the fiscal constraints that the winner of the May general election faces. In this article, all references to married couples include registered civil partners.\u00a0These were Chancellor George Osborne’s key announcements:<\/p>\n
Economic growth<\/strong><\/p>\n 3% growth forecast in 2014, up from 2.7% predicted in March 2014.<\/p>\n 2.4% growth forecast in 2015, followed by 2.2%, 2.4%, 2.3% and 2.3% in the following four years.<\/p>\n 500,000 new jobs to be created this year, 85% of Unemployment set to fall to 5.4% in 2015.<\/p>\n The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts\u00a0inflation\u00a0to be 1.2% in 2015 and 1.7% in 2016 before returning to the Bank of England’s 2% target in 2017.<\/p>\n Public Borrowing\/Deficit<\/strong><\/p>\n Deficit ‘cut in half’ since 2010.<\/p>\n Borrowing\u00a0set to fall from \u00a397.5bn in 2013\/14 to Deficit projected to fall to \u00a375.9bn in 2015\/16, \u00a340.9bn in 2016\/17, \u00a314.5bn in 2017\/18 before reaching a \u00a34bn By 2019\/20 Britain will have a surplus of \u00a323bn.<\/p>\n Debt as a share of GDP to rise to 81.1% this year before falling in every year, reaching 72.8% in 2019\/20. Reform of residential property\u00a0stamp duty\u00a0cut for\u00a098% of homebuyers\u00a0who pay it.<\/p>\n Rates apply only to that part of the property price that 0% paid for the first \u00a3125,000, then 2% on the portion up to \u00a3250,000; 5% up to \u00a3925,000, then 10% up to \u00a31.5m; 12% on anything above that, saving \u00a34,500 on an average-priced home.<\/p>\n Personal Taxes<\/strong><\/p>\n Personal tax-free allowance increased to\u00a0\u00a310,600\u00a0from Higher-rate tax band increased to \u00a342,385 from 6 April 2015.<\/p>\n When someone dies, the surviving spouse will be able to inherit their Individual Savings Account.<\/p>\n Tax-free annuities for dependants of people who die New \u00a390,000 charge for non-doms resident in the UK for 17 of the past 20 years.<\/p>\n The Government will continue consulting on whether to restrict the income tax personal allowance for non-residents \u2013 there will be no change before April 2017.<\/p>\n New inheritance tax rules introduced to target avoidance through the use of multiple trusts and simplify the calculation of trust taxation.<\/p>\n Inheritance tax exemption for members of the armed forces whose death is caused or hastened by injury while on active service will be extended to include members of the emergency services and humanitarian aid workers responding to emergency circumstances.<\/p>\n Individuals will be prevented from claiming capital gains tax entrepreneur’s relief on disposals of goodwill when they transfer the business to a related close company. This affected transfers on or after 3 December 2014.<\/p>\n Savings & Pensions<\/strong><\/p>\n New Individual Savings Account threshold allowance increases from \u00a315,000 to \u00a315,240 on 6 April 2015.<\/p>\n From 6 April 2015,\u00a0surviving beneficiaries of joint life annuities and the recipients of guaranteed annuity benefits will no longer have to pay tax on the payments\u00a0if the original policyholder dies before turning 75.<\/p>\n The basic State Pension will be increased by 2.5%. The standard minimum income guarantee in pension credit will rise by the \u00a32.85 a week cash increase in the basic State Pension. The full single-tier State Pension will rise to at least \u00a3151.25 per week.<\/p>\n Health & Education<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a32bn extra every year until 2020 for the NHS.<\/p>\n GP services to receive \u00a31.2bn in extra funds from bank foreign exchange manipulation fines.<\/p>\n Employment Allowance worth \u00a32,000 extended to carers.<\/p>\n \u00a310,000\u00a0loans for postgraduate students\u00a0studying for masters degrees.<\/p>\n Welfare<\/strong><\/p>\n Two-year freeze in working-age benefits (first announced in October 2014).<\/p>\n Migrants to lose unemployment benefits if they have ‘no prospect’ of work after six weeks.<\/p>\n Energy & Fuel<\/strong><\/p>\n Fuel duty\u00a0frozen.<\/p>\n Sovereign wealth fund for north of England to keep benefits of shale gas exploration.<\/p>\n Reduction in\u00a0oil industry\u00a0supplementary charge from 32% to 30%.<\/p>\n Business <\/strong><\/p>\n Business rates to be reviewed.<\/p>\n 25% tax on profits from activity in the UK\u00a0for companies that shift profits offshore will raise \u00a31bn over the next five years.<\/p>\n Research and development tax credit increased for small and medium-sized (SME) firms.<\/p>\n Support extended to\u00a0small businesses\u00a0with \u00a3500m of bank lending plus \u00a3400m government-backed venture capital funds which invest in SMEs.<\/p>\n \u00a345m package of support for exporters.<\/p>\n Expand tax relief on business investment in flood defences.<\/p>\n National Insurance on young apprentices abolished.<\/p>\n New relief effective from April 2015 will be introduced, allowing individuals who lend through peer to peer (P2P) platforms to offset any losses from loans which go bad against other P2P income.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The key announcements at a glance Chancellor George Osborne delivered his Autumn Statement 2014 to Parliament on 3 December last year. Much of the commentary focused on weak public sector finances data in the context of strong GDP and employment growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vizionwealth.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vizionwealth.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vizionwealth.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vizionwealth.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vizionwealth.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vizionwealth.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vizionwealth.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vizionwealth.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vizionwealth.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nnew jobs full-time.<\/p>\n
\n\u00a391.3bn in 2014\/15.<\/p>\n
\nsurplus in 2018\/19.<\/p>\n
\nStamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT)<\/p>\n
\nfalls within each band.<\/p>\n
\n6 April 2015.<\/p>\n
\nunder 75.<\/p>\n