With the budget now barely a week away, the rumour mill is in absolute overdrive.
Speculation is rife about what may or may not be in the Chancellor’s red box and it seems that everyone has an opinion. Even my barber this morning wanted to chew the fat on the budget (and he didn’t even know I work in finance).
In recent days, we have heard reports of people taking increasingly extreme action to try to preempt what they think will be announced on the 30th October. This as a strategy is fraught with difficulty.
These kinds of decisions generally don’t exist in a vacuum and action taken today to try and avoid a potential tax change in the budget could well end up causing significant damage if the perceived change does not take place, or indeed if a different kind of change is made.
The challenge in the advisory community at the moment is that we simply do not know. I have commented before on how Labour have been very explicit about the taxes that they are not going to change (although even these now seem to be open for negotiation), however they have been almost entirely silent on the taxes that they are going to change – making way for the current wave of rampant speculation.
Ultimately, we can only really recommend action based on what we know the rules to be today. Anything other than this is just fraught with difficulty.
Indeed – the Money Helper service has even waded into the debate, cautioning against people taking action that could come back to bite them in the future.
Rest assured, we will be scrutinising every line of the budget as soon as it is available and will of course be in touch with impacted clients to advise of any planning opportunities presented.
