The Spring Budget on 3 March was not the end of the taxing story. The run up to the March Budget was accompanied by much press speculation about changes to capital gains tax (CGT), inheritance tax (IHT) and pension tax relief. The first two had been the subject of reports from the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) while the Treasury has issued a consultation paper on the third. When Budget Day arrived, the trio received almost no mention from the Chancellor. Attention then t

The freeze on the inheritance tax (IHT) nil rate band will mean more tax from more estates. In March 2006 the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, announced that the IHT nil rate band for 2009/10 would be £325,000. Announcing the change over three years before it would happen was seen by some as a political tactic, kicking a contentious topic down the road. Little did anyone anticipate at the time that the figure of £325,000 would still apply two decades later. However, the announc

We could see a jump in inflation soon. The pandemic has posed problems for the Office for National Statistics (ONS) when it comes to calculating the rate of inflation. For example: · How do you measure the price of an item or service when a lockdown means it is not for sale? Two good examples are the ‘Restaurants and hotels’ category, which in 2020 took up almost 12% of the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) and the ‘Package holidays’ subgroup of the ‘Recreation and culture’ categor

The UK base rate may be stuck at 0.1%, but there is interest rate movement elsewhere. The Bank of England has kept its base rate below 1% for over 12 years now. The rate first dropped to 0.5% on 5 March 2009, during the financial crisis. It did briefly rise to the dizzying heights of 0.75% between August 2018 and March 2020, only to fall twice in less than a fortnight once Covid-19 hit, ending at its current level of 0.1%. The base rate set by the Bank of England and its cent