Small business owners hit by tax increases in Budget 2017

The Labour MP Toby Perkins, who has campaigned for the government to help pubs, said: “I welcome any action that will mitigate unfair business rates impact on pubs, but for many pubs, their rise got £1,000 smaller, [there was] not a cut”.

However, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) which provides the official forecasts that underpin the budget, said Hammond’s plans did not look ambitious enough for him to meet his goal of balancing the budget in the early 2020s, especially given rising healthcare costs from an aging population. “The deficit is down, but debt is still too high”, he added.

This time a year ago, inflation was expected to be less than 2 per cent until 2018.

David Cheetham, chief market analyst with retail broker XTB said that the pound had “risen off its lowest level against the dollar since mid-January in the past few minutes after chancellor Philip Hammond announced upgrades to the GDP forecasts”.

However, Britain’s debt still stands at almost £1.7trn, which equates to £62 per household with the United Kingdom spending £50bn on debt every year.

There was help for small traders hit by increases in business rates, an issue that has been repeatedly raised by lawmakers from Hammond’s own Conservative Party.

Get ready to pay even more for your flights: Air Passenger Duty (APD) rates for 2018-19 will be increased in line with RPI.

Rather, the treasury has trailed a number of targeted tax increases, which will fund a social care injection of about one billion, as well as short-term relief on business rates and a likely continued fuel duty freeze. The result is that companies have a large incentive to reclassify workers as self-employed, in order to avoid this NIC bill – as well as to avoid employment legislation, paying for paid holidays etc. Hammond worries that the steady drift of employees to self-employment will reduce his revenue.

Many predicted the chancellor would announce tax hikes for the self-employed as the United Kingdom tax system struggles to cope with the increasing amount of self employed “gig” workers.

Chris Bryce, chief executive of the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self Employed (IPSE), said the hardworking self-employed people in the United Kingdom may feel that the chancellor has it in for them.

Class 2 Nics abolition has been confirmed by gov’t.

The Chancellor said that he was abolishing class 2 NICs from April 2018 and Class 4 NICs will rise from 2 per cent to 10 per cent, with a further 1 per cent rise in 2019. On the upside, he said he expected Britain to borrow less this year than initially expected. Hammond has missed a chance to take a fatal flaw out of the Innovative Finance ISA that prevents investors investing across multiple P2P platforms in the same tax year – leaving investment diversification very hard for people.

In the build up to the Budget, it was revealed that planned Business Rate revaluations coming into effect in April could see some businesses hit with a 400% hike in rates overnight.

Personal allowance to rise to £11,500 in 2017/2018.

Mr Hammond told the House of Commons that the additional funding demonstrated that “we are stronger together in this great United Kingdom”.

He also announced measures to adjust the tax advantages afforded to director shareholders.

This will now be cut substantially to £2,000, with a further cut in the allowance slated for 2020.