Autumn Statement – Tackling tax avoidance

The Chancellor announced a series of changes to student loans in his Autumn Statement, including retrospective tweaks that have led to accusations of the government “mis-selling” the loans.

Here, Tommaso Faccio, Lecturer in Accounting and Taxation at Nottingham University Business School, looks at what we have learned.

Following the “no” vote in the House of Lords, Osborne has chose to fully retract his plan to further reduce tax credits.

The Chancellor will set out how he intends to slice £20 billion from spending and £12 billion from welfare – as well as raising £5 billion in a crackdown on tax avoidance – to meet his commitment to balance the nation’s books in five years.

The Office for Budget Responsibility was created by the coalition government in 2010 to provide forecasts and statistics about the health of the economy, with the aim that they would be independent of government.

The cost of auto insurance up 9.2%.

However, Mr Hillman said that cuts to the BIS budget would still “end up hitting higher education institutions in one way or another”.

Postgraduate students will also be able to borrow for their education under the student loan system from 2016, providing they are younger than 60. Also from April 1 2016, people buying additional properties as second homes or as a buy to let will pay an additional 3% in stamp duty.

The Department for Transport’s capital spending budget will increase by 50 per cent to £61bn by 2020/2021.

James Pinchbeck, Marketing Partner, Streets Chartered Accountants, said: “It’s a balancing act; the Chancellor’s success in achieving his goals will be dependent on realising public sector “efficiencies”, attaining tax revenues and businesses thriving whilst at the same time delivering public sector services and infrastructure investment”. Before any more significant changes are made, it’s worth the Government analysing how the changes to date have impacted not only the sector, but also the UK’s competitiveness on the global market. Local councils will be allowed to keep 100 per cent of the receipts from the assets they sell. By promoting competition for SME credit and encouraging more apprentices to start work, as well as extending the Small Business Rate Relief, the Chancellor has shown that he is committed to supporting the UK’s SMEs. “Larger employers will, however, be concerned at the rate of the new Apprenticeship Levy of 0.5% of payroll costs from April 2017”.

Some 300,000 people have signed a petition calling for the removal of the Value-Added Tax on sanitary products and the government wants to change European Union law so it can abolish that altogether.

Although George can’t remove the “tampon tax” without European Union consent, he has promised that any monies raised through it will be directed to women’s charities.