Tax changes that didn't happen
The snap General Election curtailed the Parliamentary time available to pass new laws. As a result, a number of tax changes which were expected to come into effect on 1 April or 6 April 2017 did not become law, including:
New allowances
Two new allowances of £1,000 each were to apply from 6 April 2017. These would allow taxpayers to earn small amounts from let property or trading and not report that income on a tax return. You need to keep records of all the income you receive and the related expenses, however small.
Cash Basis
Individual landlords were due to apply a simplified form of accounting called the cash basis. This was to apply from 6 April 2017 where gross rents were no more than £150,000. The transactions recorded since that date are unlikely to cause many problems, but be careful to record the date of all receipts and expenses relating to your lettings business.
Non-domiciled individuals
Individuals who are not domiciled in the UK were to be subject to a new deemed-domiciled regime from 6 April 2017. If you are affected, you may have sold assets around that date to prepare for the new regime, and have realised a capital gain unnecessarily. If you took advantage of the rules to cleanse foreign bank accounts, you may have moved money into the UK, which you thought was not taxable. These funds may now be taxable, so we need to discuss you tax position.
Pensions
If you have already drawn taxable benefits from your money-purchase pension scheme, your subsequent pension contributions are capped by the Money Purchase Annual Allowance (MPAA). There is now uncertainty about how much pension contributions you can make in 2017/18 as MPAA was to reduce from £10,000 to £4,000, but it didn’t.
Capital allowances
Businesses that installed new electric vehicle charging points after 23 November 2016 expected to receive 100% capital allowance on that expenditure. That allowance is not available.
The new Government may reintroduce some or all of the above tax changes, but not necessarily from the same dates.
