With the recent unveiling of the UK Autumn Budget 2024, significant changes to personal and corporate tax regulations are set to reshape financial landscapes for individuals and businesses alike.
In his latest write-up, Peter Webb, our expert technical consultant delves into the nuanced details of these tax adjustments, providing clarity on what to expect moving forward. From adjustments to income tax thresholds to corporate tax rate modifications, understanding these changes is crucial to effective financial planning.
Join us as we explore the implications of this budget on your financial strategy and what it means for the future of taxation in the UK.
“Personal
Rates of income tax and National Insurance (NI) paid by employees, and of VAT, to remain unchanged
Income tax band thresholds remain frozen until 2028
Basic rate capital gains tax on profits from selling shares to increase from from 10% to 18%, with the higher rate rising from 20% to 24%
Rates on profits from selling additional property unchanged
Business Asset Disposal Relief tax rate to rise to 18% over the next 2 tax years
Business Relief and Agricultural Property Relief will be limited to £1mn from April 2026 with 50% IHT relief above that limit
IHT relief on AIM shares to be limited to 50% (ie eective 20% IHT rate)
Stamp duty surcharge, paid on second home purchases in England and Northern Ireland, to go up from 3% to 5%
Point at which house buyers start paying stamp duty on a main home to drop from £250,000 to £125,000 in April, reversing a previous tax cut
Threshold at which first-time buyers pay the tax will also drop back, from £425,000 to £300,000
5p cut in fuel duty on petrol and diesel brought in by the Conservatives, due to end in April 2025, kept for another year
Basic and new state pension payments to go up by 4.1% next year due to the “triple lock”, more than working age benefits
Inheritance tax threshold freeze extended by further two years to 2030, with unspent pension pots also subject to IHT from 2027
Business
Companies to pay NI at 15% on salaries above £5,000 from April, up from 13.8% on salaries above £9,100, raising an additional £25bn a year
Employment allowance – which allows smaller companies to reduce their NIC liability – to increase from £5,000 to £10,500
Tax paid by private equity managers on Carried Interest to rise from up to 28% to up to 32% from April
Main rate of corporation tax, paid by businesses on taxable profits over £250,000, to stay at 25% until next election”
We encourage our readers to engage with us on this topic. If you have questions about how these budget changes may affect your personal or corporate tax planning, or if you need expert advice tailored to your specific circumstances, please don’t hesitate to reach out. You can connect with Peter & I through the comments section below or contact us directly at peter.webb@sjpp.asia. Your financial well-being is our priority, and we’re here to help you navigate these changes effectively!
For Brits, the most recent Spring Budget announcement was incredibly important, as it gave us some very key and drastic updates for tax and spending. Essentially, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt aimed to deliver lower taxes, encourage investment and improve public services. Although the elections may affect this announcement, it’s still very important for Brits, particularly those abroad, to be aware of. Martin at Spice Taxation (Company Registration No. 202133724G), has written a very in depth piece on the Spring Budget. It’s incredibly useful to hear the views of a professional tax expert, and Martin has been kind enough for me to share his thoughts here. Of course, I myself am not a UK Tax expert, so I often seek the help of professionals, such as Martin, to help me and my clients with their tax planning when necessary.
Below is Spice Taxation’s write up on the matter.
Our Thoughts on the Spring Budget – 6th March 2024 The Most Important Budget for Expatriates since 2010
“Over the years I have discovered that I am just not very good at predicting Budgets. Speculation is always rife about what a Chancellor might do in face of this and that economic and political situation, but mostly the actual announcements just tend to underwhelm and disappoint. Maybe I just crave excitement!
However, all that changed with Jeremy Hunt’s Budget on 6th March. It is likely to be the last Conservative Party Budget before the next General Election – an election which the Labour Party is widely expected to win. So, it remains to be seen how many of the announcements will find their way onto the Statute books if Labour does win. That aside, it really was an exciting Budget which promises a lot of change, much of it positive.
For much of the speech, it felt like a ‘normal budget’ with a plethora of announcements about regional incentives, funding initiatives, levelling up grants, subsidies and tax breaks for the arts etc. However, there was also a number of genuinely eye-catching and important announcements which are also relevant to expatriates.
First of all, Jeremy Hunt announced a further reduction in National Insurance paid by employees and the self-employed of 2%, from 6th April 2024. For employees, this will reduce from 10% to 8% and for the Self-Employed from 8% to 6%. For those returning to the UK, this will be welcome news.
Secondly, he announced the intention to introduce a new Individual Savings Account – the UK ISA, with an annual subscription allowance of GBP 5,000, in addition to the existing threshold of GBP 20,000. This new ISA would hold British-only assets – equities listed on the four recognised UK stock exchanges, UK corporate bonds and gilts and collectives. This will be good for UK resident savers.
Third, there were a few property tax announcements which came as a surprise:
o The marginal rate of Capital Gains Tax on the sale of residential property will reduce from 28% to 24% from 6th April 2024. This is intended to help stimulate the property market. The basic rate will remain at 18%. This is good for anyone selling, gifting or assigning an interest in UK residential property from that date.
o Multiple Dwellings Relief for Stamp Duty Land Tax is being abolished from 1st June 2024 – this was a relief that allowed you to take the average purchase price for SDLT purposes where at least two properties were being purchased in a single transaction.
o Furnished Holiday Letting status is to be abolished from 6th April 2025, with some anti-forestalling provisions which came into effect on 6th March 2024.
o The geographical scope of Agricultural Property Relief and Woodlands Relief (two Inheritance Tax incentives) will be limited to assets situated in the UK only from 6th April 2024 – those situated in the Crown Dependencies and the EEA will lose their IHT protected status.
Fourth, the VAT registration threshold will rise to GBP 90,000 from 6th April 2024, an increase of GBP 5,000, which will be welcome news for small businesses.
However, perhaps the biggest and most barnstorming announcement was the abolition of ‘non-dom’ status from 6th April 2025. The Conservative Party has been a staunch defender of the ‘non-domiciled regime’ over many years, so it was something of a surprise to see them adopt an avowed Labour Party policy. Stealing their thunder no doubt. It is a very major announcement that will impact many people.
In a nutshell, the Government plans to delink a person’s ‘domicile status’ from their UK tax outcomes, and move to a residence-based set of incentives. Consultation documents are yet to be published, but the main features of the new system will be to:
– Abolish the ‘remittance basis of taxation’ for UK resident ‘non-doms’.
– Replace it with an opt-in system that will allow, seemingly anyone – including, presumably, British nationals – to exempt their non-UK incomes and gains from UK tax for the first four years of UK residence, provided that they have been continuously non-resident for at least the 10 previous years.
– Exempt from tax the remittance of these non-UK income and gains to the UK, which will be hugely simplifying in the long run.
– Retain Overseas Workday Relief for qualifying individuals for the first 3 tax years of residence.
– Apply world-wide taxation for all individuals from the 5th year of residence in the UK.
– Introduce a thoughtful set of transitional reliefs for certain ‘non-doms’ who are already resident in the UK
– Switch away from a ‘domicile based’ system of Inheritance Tax to a residence-based system, whereby qualifying individuals switch to IHT on world-wide assets only after 10 years of residence.
Keep anyone who leaves the UK within IHT for 10 further years, which presumably also will apply to British Expatriates too. UK assets remain within Inheritance Tax at all times, regardless of residence.
We are missing a lot of technical detail here which should be answered by the Consultation Documents that the Government will be publishing shortly. So watch this space! However, whilst I have many more questions than answers at the moment, at first sight the main impacts appear to be the following:
a) Tax planning for relocation to the UK is likely to change quite a bit and these proposals could amount to a generous tax break for returning British expatriates.
b) They will also make Inheritance Tax planning potentially a lot simpler and not so reliant on subjective judgments about where a person is domiciled.
c) It might possibly result in an exemption from Inheritance Tax for a swathe of non-resident British expatriates who have already been non-resident for at least 10 years, which would be quite a result!
I am going out on a limb a little by saying that it appears the proposals will also apply to those we currently regard as ‘domiciled’ in the UK. However, surely that is the point – it is switch away from a tax system where a person’s domicile was the deciding factor, to a tax system where the deciding factor is driven by residence. This potentially bodes extremely well for British expatriates. If this Budget does turn out to be the Conservative Party’s fiscal swansong, it is perhaps fitting that its period of Government will be bookended by a commitment to enshrine in law a statutory test for residence in 2010 at the start, and a set of announcements that displace domicile with a new regime based on that very residence test at the end. Mastering the Statutory Residence Test is clearly going to be more and more important. Beyond this, all tax rates, thresholds and allowances for Personal Tax remain frozen, as do the rates for Corporation Tax. The dividend allowance will fall to GBP 500 from 6th April 2024 and the Capital Gains Tax Annual Exemption will fall to GBP 3,000 from the same date. Class 2 and Class 3 voluntary National Insurance Contribution rates will remain unchanged at GBP 3.45 per week and GBP 17.45 per week respectively, and the New State Pension will rise to GBP 221.20 per week (of GBP 11,502.40 per year) from 6th April 2024.”
If you would like to discuss your own circumstances in confidence or would like to be on the subscriber list for Spice Taxation’s new dedicated coverage of these breaking developments, please contact Martin at martin@spicetaxation.com or by sending a Whatsapp to +65 96650019.
I’d like to thank Martin at Spice Taxation for allowing me to share this information with my readers. I am sure that this will help many of you plan your finances in relation to UK tax.
2024 may be the biggest election year ever, with almost half of the globe voting! At least 64 countries, plus the European Union will be voting and holding national elections. This is a massive year for global politics, so I thought I would discuss some of the notable elections and ones that interest me (don’t worry, I shan’t talk about all 64!).
US
This one probably makes us groan, and I’m sure we’re all bored of hearing about Trump & Biden, but this is arguably the most important election out of the lot. The US is the largest global power, and this election could see a change in USA’s relationship with North Korea, China, Russia and their stance on the ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, depending on who wins. Also this is probably the only one where one of the candidates was a previous president who got impeached twice?
Taiwan
I feel like the whole world has been holding their breath when it comes to Taiwan & China, and this election will be no different! The winner of the Taiwanese election will have a tricky balancing act with China, and it’ll be interesting to see if Beijing continues its hold on the island, and whether the imminent threat of invasion will remain.
North Korea
This is interesting, because I didn’t even know the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea had elections (?!). I’m sure the Kim family, who are seen as somewhat deities in North Korea, don’t have an opposition party? What’s even more interesting, is that every election has been given a ‘freedom & fairness’ score (with 0.00 not being free nor fair at all, with 1 being the most free and fair), and North Korea scored higher than a lot of countries! I thought it would score 0.00, but it scored 0.14, which was higher than Venezuela- which I also expected to be low! Countries that scored 0.00 were Syria, Mali, Chad and South Sudan.
India
This election will be one to watch; not only is this election the largest in the world, but India is a rising global power and one of the most populous countries on the globe. The outcome may change not only domestic policies, but also regional politics, particularly concerning China. It may also escalate (or hopefully deescalate) the country’s rising Muslim/Hindu tensions.
Russia
Shockingly another country that’s free & fairness is not at the bottom of the list (although it is above North Korea)! But I don’t think anyone will be shocked when Putin is re-elected and the current trajectory of Russia’s geopolitics continues- i.e. the war continuing.
EU
Sadly, we’ve seen a surge in right wing parties in Europe, and I’m wondering if this will continue into 2024? It seems that a lot of centre-right parties will maintain their current positions, with even far-right parties gaining traction. The main points for discussion will of course be how the EU navigates conflicts, such as in Ukraine and Gaza, along with its green policies and the EU budget. Deficit Rules were suspended during the pandemic, meaning that members were allowed to borrow whatever they wanted to support their citizens, but this is set to be scrapped in 2024, with Deficit Rules being reinstated. Will this create tension between members?
Indonesia
I don’t have a tonne of opinions on this, but I thought it was interesting to note that Indonesia’s elections are only being held over one day! That’s the largest single-day vote, and I wonder how they are going to pull that off in such a large country that has some very remote locations.
Ukraine
Even though Ukraine is under Martial Law, which normally prohibits elections, there has been talk of these elections continuing, as a mark of democratic health. However, this may prove to be too challenging to organise during a war, with safety being a main concern. Either way, Zelenskiy is set to run for a third term, and he will probably win, with his ratings still remaining very high. However, parliament would have to change the law so that Ukrainiens can vote from overseas.
UK
The outlook of British politics has been bleak for a while now, and with the Conservative Party being in power for the past 14 years, some believe that Labour will win the next election, which Sunak has said will be held this year. This is conflicting for me- whilst I am desperate to see the Conservative Party go, and end their reign of austerity, I’m not convinced that the Labour Party will do a better job. Not only that, I have found myself shocked at every vote and election result in the UK for the longest time. None of us thought Brexit would happen, and how naïve we were to think that we would remain. So I’ve learnt to never think that the obvious flaws of the current party, means that they won’t be re-elected!
Whilst this may be the biggest election year ever, it may also be the most challenging for democracy, with many elections being carried out unfairly, or with risk of danger. Not only that, shock decisions and outcomes may shake the geopolitical framework as we know it. It’s going to be an interesting year for sure.
I wanted to write an article about my recent travel experience regardless of the outcome, and I wanted to write it to help those who are going to be travelling during this time, or are even thinking about it. We’re in our third year of the pandemic and I hadn’t seen my family in two years. Regardless of the situation, I was going to take any opportunity I could to go home to see them.
That being said, there’s a few things I wish I knew before flying. Even though I had friends that had flown before me, there were new developments every day with the Omicron variant that definitely kept me on my toes.
Pre-Flight
My main concern was coming back on a VTL (vaccinated travel lane) flight, meaning that when I returned to Singapore there was no need to quarantine. This was paramount as I had face-to-face training booked at work. I was going for two weeks, mainly because I’d already taken a lot of time off for our wedding and staycays, but also because I am a licenced financial services consultant in Singapore- I cannot legally work or give financial advice in other countries and if I was out of SG for too long I would run into tax issues.
VTL flights were CRAZY expensive- one BA flight was about $6,000. I love my family but was not about to pay that. So, I found a cheaper way to fly via Berlin with Scoot, return VTL, pretty cheap. I also booked a pre departure test for the UK, booked a day 2 test for when we got there, completed our passenger locator form and my VTP (vaccinated travel pass). I would recommend printing everything off for a smooth transition, and I even printed off all travel itinerary, insurance and our marriage certificate (he’s a Singaporean so I knew I could come back on a family ties lane if there was another lockdown).
Flight
With all our documents ready and check-in online done it was time to head off. Thank goodness we got to the airport early because, even though we had already checked in, it didn’t matter. We still had to queue and have Scoot check all our documents, which was fine and didn’t take too long, but they seem to have more staff ‘assisting you’ at the automatic booths than for the Covid checks, which seemed counter-productive, and our assistant kept pressing all the wrong buttons, so it would have just been easier to do it ourselves. But once check in was done, everything was easy and the flight to Berlin was pretty smooth.
That’s when the panic started. We only had a two-hour layover in Berlin (which was totally my own doing; we landed at 9am and all other flights to England weren’t until 7pm, and I would rather take my chances than sit in an airport for that long). The issue was that, because it was self-transfer with two different airlines, we had to go through passport control, collect our bags, check them in again, go through security and then immigration a second time before boarding our next flight. This was the most stress I’ve experienced in a long time, and if it weren’t for the kind family in front of us at immigration letting us past, we would have missed our flight. Anyway, we got our connection just in the nick of time and arrived safely in Manchester.
Being At Home
I am not over exaggerating when I say that seeing my mom at Manchester Airport for the first time in two years was like something out of Love Actually. I cried, she cried, and there was a tonne of people in the exact same situation, embracing each other after years of being apart. It was at this moment that I realised that all of this was worth it. It was like time had stood still and nothing had changed being back at home. It was also very special because this was the first time my husband was coming home with me and had met my parents face to face.
Whilst I was home, I met friends, got my booster and went to a club. Although I will say that because of my constant fear of Covid, we were super careful; wore masks EVERYWHERE, constantly hand sanitised, stayed in small groups and sat by ourselves with masks on in the club (lame I know). The UK had become very lax about the situation, with no one really checking vaccination status or wearing a mask. And to some extent I agree with the majority that it does need to be taken as an endemic now, but I had a flight to catch in two weeks.
Omicron Panic
During the trip I had several friends cancel on their plans because they had tested positive and were self-isolating. I was happy to hear, however, that they weren’t taking long to recover and had little to no symptoms. Governments worldwide didn’t see the positive side, however, and with news that Europe was shutting their boarders the panic started to set in. Our flight back to Singapore was again via Berlin and it wasn’t long until EasyJet cancelled our flight from Gatwick.
Then Singapore announced that it was suspending all VTL sales…we had 4 hours to frantically book flights. I found a pretty reasonable booking with Turkish Airlines arriving in Singapore on the 1st January.
Heading Back
We flew back from London and, after a lovely time with family and friends, we got our lateral flows done in Boots somewhere in Piccadilly, did our Health Travel Declaration for Singapore and stayed next to Heathrow Airport.
The gentleman at the Turkish Airlines desk was incredibly helpful and the document check was very smooth. Everything from that point to Istanbul went very well and felt like normal flying times. When we got to Istanbul we had to have our VTL documents checked again, which was fine for us but not for all- there were people being told they had to say in Istanbul Airport, others on the phone to their respective embassies and some being interrogated about their trip to Singapore. I genuinely think this happened because Turkish Airlines doesn’t make it clear on their website that the flight is a VTL- I had to trawl through several websites to confirm and the VTL flight only happens in January once every two weeks. And if you weren’t from Singapore, how would you even know what a VTL is?
Landing
Everything when we arrived in Singapore was smooth- we got our bags quickly, and, although I hadn’t pre-booked my PCR, it was quick and efficient. We got home and awaited our results…the morning came and my husband got a call from MOH saying that he had tested positive on his PCR. This came as quite a shock as we were both negative before we left, my whole family had tested negative and we are now testing negative on ART tests. Hours later I still had not received my results. But eventually they came in and were positive too. We now both have to quarantine for ten days (from result, not from test, so essentially 11 days), which I am pretty upset about. For some context, it came out in the news that those on non-VTL flights will no longer have to do a PCR on arrival, and self-isolate for 7 days. If they test positive on an ART they have to isolate for 72 hours or until they test negative. Please tell me why for VTL it is a 10 day quarantine, regardless of how soon you test negative?
Final Thoughts
All in all I am very happy I went home and nothing will take away that time I spent with friends and family. However, I do feel that the VTL scheme is just a way of making money- ticket prices are insanely high, the number of tests is insurmountable and the PCR upon arrival was $125, which I got the results well after 24hrs instead of 6-12. And on top of that I still have to quarantine longer than if it was non-VTL. The level of extra documentation and stress made flying incredibly nerve-wracking. I used to be a frequent flyer and travel a few times a month- this trip I was incredibly anxious, panicked and it was overall such an unpleasant experience. Also, if I knew I was going to test positive anyway, even after all the many precautions I took, I probably would have cared less and relaxed a bit more.
Investing for Singapore Expats 