UK.gov to cut corporation tax, plug private equity
Brown Darling hunts loopholes
Posted in Management, 9th October 2007 15:41 GMT
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Alistair Darling cut corporation tax and promised to overhaul capital gains and inheritance tax as he made his first pre-budget report since taking over as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Darling stepped into Gordon Brown’s sensible shoes just as the world economy started to get all wobbly, with a global credit crunch coinciding with righteous indignation over the pay packets reeled in by the masters of the universe running the financial markets, particularly in the private equity and hedge fund sectors.
This afternoon, Darling insisted the UK was well-placed to weather the current global economic uncertainty. He said growth would hit 3 per cent this year. However, growth next year will be lower than previously forecast at between 2 per cent to 2.5 per cent. The following year, he predicted, it will bounce back to 2.5 to 3 per cent.
Darling went heavy on innovation and IP. He might have surprised some in the UK’s tech sector by claiming that UK investment in skills innovation and IP – at £250bn– was on a par with the US. He cited the UK’s performance in the Nobel prize league, and promised more funding into medical research.
Moving from blue sky issues, to financial nitty gritty, he said corporation tax will be cut by 2p to 28p. At the same time, he promised to cut red tape for the self-employed and small businesses.
Taper relief on capital gains will be dumped, and will instead be replaced by a flat 18 per cent tax rate on capital gains.
Acknowleding the clamour over private equity, hedge funds and other financial public enemies, he said a new code of conduct for the private equity industry will appear next month.
In the meantime, Darling said he would plug loopholes which have helped inflate private equity pay packets. Rich non-domiciles will also find their loopholes plugged, with Darling promising more “consulting” on how to do this. However, he rubbished recent Tory proposals to bring in a flat charge for non-domiciles, saying this would lead to a shortfall of over £2bn.
After moving around the red tape, he also made a few green announcements, including levying duty on airline flights, rather than individual passengers, and bringing the airline industry into the European carbon trading scheme.
Towards the end of the speech he laid into recent Tory proposals to raise inheritance tax thresholds to £1m, opting instead for an early doubling of the threshold to £600,000 for couples, with the threshold raising again to £700,000 in 2010.®
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COMMENTS
Alistair needs some more cash to pay for Browns promises and overspends
New Liebour, new spin.
So, after raiding pension funds to pay for more assorted useless quangos, an inflation busting pay rise for all those 'career politicians' (are you donating any of your '£150,000 +whatever you can claim' GUARANTEED p.a salary to charity Mr Hain? Thought not) - we had some nicely orchestrated righteous indignation when city bonuses were announced and the 'fix' announced is the scrapping of taper relief on Capital Gains Tax and a blanket 18% rate introduced. Of course this only affects those greedy good for nothing city types right? WRONG!!! It's a tax increase of 12.5% for basic rate tax payers on any capital gains - so you pay your income tax when you get your money, you put it into a unit trust to save for a rainy day ('cos your pension ain't worth sh** after Gordy's raid) and hey you also pay another 18% when you draw any money from that unit trust. Forecast growth of 2.5 - 3% next year - cloud cuckoo land - so we'll see another shortfall in the Treasury's coffers, more government borrowing to pay for more overpaid NHS managers, an ID card that nobody wants and costs billions to implement... Wooohoooo! It's back to the seventies boys and girls, the strikes have already started!
taper relief?
so you put your life savings into a business, work your butt of for twenty or thirty years, pay tax on your profits; then when you want to sell the business and retire on the proceeds the chancellor wants 18% (because his fat cat friends in the city were using taper relief to only pay 10% tax on their dodgy income).
How exactly is that fair?
AndyD 8-(#
Rich Sick Fucks
I dont really care how much tax you pay after you wait for your parents to drop dead. Ghoulish is not in it. Sick.
Not just spin
Firstly the claim that everyone likely to have to pay IHT will have a trust in place is just plain wrong, the change removes this need all together so is an improvement not just spin. Also the changes to widows/widowers has moved many out of an IHT situation, again not just spin.
Lost?
Aye, one wonders weather it'll be the Labour party or the uk economy that goes bankrupt first.
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