Key Points from the Spring Budget 2023:
Taxation
- Cap on amount workers can accumulate in pensions savings over their lifetime before having to pay extra tax (currently £1.07m) to be abolished
- Tax-free yearly allowance for pension pot to rise from £40,000 to £60,000 – having been frozen for nine years
- Fuel duty frozen – the 5p cut to fuel duty on petrol and diesel, due to end in April, kept for another year
Energy
- Commitment to invest £20bn over next two decades on low-carbon energy projects, with a focus on carbon capture and storage
- £200m to bring energy charges for prepayment meters into line with prices for customers paying by direct debit – affects 4m households
Jobs
- 30 hours of free childcare for working parents in England expanded to cover one and two-year-olds, in a bid to help them work more
- More places on “skills boot camps” to encourage over-50s who have left their jobs to return to the workplace
- Immigration rules to be relaxed for five roles in construction sector, to ease labour shortages
- Tougher requirements to look for work and increased job support for lead child carers on universal credit
Business
- Reduced paperwork for international traders, who will also be given longer to submit customs forms under streamlined rules
- Tax breaks and other benefits for 12 new Investment Zones across the UK, funded by £80m each over the next five years
- Main rate of corporation tax, paid by businesses on taxable profits over £250,000, confirmed to increase from 19% to 25%
- Companies with profits between £50,000 and £250,000 to pay between 19% and 25%
Economy
- Office for Budget Responsibility predicts the UK will avoid recession in 2023, but the economy will shrink by 0.2%
- Growth of 1.8% predicted for next year, with 2.5% in 2025 and 2.1% in 2026
- UK’s inflation rate predicted to fall to 2.9% by the end of this year, down from 10.7% in the last three months of 2022
- Underlying debt forecast to be 92.4% of GDP this year, rising to 93.7% in 2024
