The Budget that never was
The annual Budget Statement is usually a big event in the tax world, but 2019 will be the year without a Budget as the government is frozen in a state of Brexit paralysis.
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That might be 24 hours out of date. In today's policy, the Government wild cat strike has been abandoned once the Ministers realised they did not have a strike pay fund. So the latest from Number 10 - per Tom Newton-Dunn is that all Government business except Brexit is back on.
You can't make this stuff up! The one bloody thing they are supposed to be doing is now the one thing they are planning not to bloody do.
I did query this scenario with the Treasury press office this morning before hitting publish. They're adament the Budget is off, regardless of what happens. However, you can't really rule anything out at this stage...
Yes you are right. The intel. I posted was from a press meeting this afternoon. However, it's also true that Cummings has been deliberately mis-briefing things to the press as a way of testing the waters before taking a decision.
So only time will tell. At this stage, if we have a General Election it seems to me that both main parties go into it with massively ambitious spending schemes and no hint of how they are realistically going to pay for them. Nor indeed taking any heed of a likely recession in 2020 or the negative impact of Brexit on government revenues.
This election is shaping up to be deciding whether you believe more in fairies or leprechauns.
£375b was 'found' for QE overnight all those year ago, don't remember that getting much budgetary scrutiny.
Seems if we need to find money for bankers it's there, if it's for the rest of us it's unaffordable.
I thought it was a bit odd to have a budget when (a) you don't have a working majority and (b) you expect an election before the legislation could possibly get passed.
Anyhow that's a day and a half I don't have to spend listening to it/writing up about it/telling clients about it.
On the downside I guess we will be back to doing them in March.
So we won't know what the personal allowance is from next April until this shambles of a parliament sorts itself out? You couldn't write this stuff.
Shame we voters cannot take control of the order paper and tell these useless ****s to get things done and stop pi$$ing about. Oh wait, didn't we do that already..?
The key point in all this is, if my memory is correct, which taxes lapse if not "renewed". The one positive from Brexit could be the H of C remains in purgatory right through past 5th April and we end up not having to pay some taxes.
Can anyone advise which taxes do need annual renewal- is income tax one? (If it is and they can carry on just in to april I expect I could persuade my employer to pay me my entire salary for 2020/2021 in one go just after 5th April)
Income tax is one you'll be pleased to hear, though I'm not sure that PAYE regs have to be renewed, so deductions would continue, but HMRC would have no right to them.
As the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968 applies to income tax, corporation tax, petroleum revenue tax, stamp duty reserve tax, VAT, insurance premium tax, landfill tax and duties of customs and excise I assume none of them can be collected if PCTA1968 conditions are not met.
When paper corporation tax returns were first banned, you might remember we had all that nonsense from HMRC about not filing CT600s until after the Finance Act received Royal Assent in August. If I remember rightly, income tax was renewed and personal allowances were raised by Statutory Instrument, but they couldn't/wouldn't update corporation tax rates that way. I've still got one client who overpaid CT that year because they taxed him at the old rate. As his company has been dormant ever since then he hasn't had a chance to recover it, so we have to keep carrying it forward in his accounts as a tax debtor. About time we wrote it off I suppose.
Rebecca, I think you are letting your political colours show. The whole country knows why we're not leaving the EU on 31/10 and it's not Johnson's fault. Would you rather he had broken the law? A law, by the way, that our elected Government didn't pass.
Also, I think comments like "outraged that their best-laid plans have been thwarted" is crossing the line from keeping us up-to-date with the Budget news into political propaganda. When I click on my weekly accountancy bulletin, I don't expect it to look like the front page of the Daily Mirror!
Whilst us subscribers are allowed to say our two-pennorth, it doesn't look right for contributors to nail their colours so brazenly to the mast or it makes it look like the site itself is taking a political position. Whatever side of the debate we're on, we're all entitled to have relevant news presented to us in an impartial and even-handed manner. Mind you, we used to say that about the BBC once!