Well, the Spring Statement this week was uneventful (from an Estate Planning perspective at least) and that is a good thing!
For one, it means that the Labour Government, in this tiny respect at least, do seem to have kept a promise – when they were elected they committed to holding just one major fiscal event a year and they have held true to their word… for now.
The Spring Statement really ran as it was intended – we got an economic update, some revised forecasts and the usual ‘book cooking’ to make the country’s finances meet the Government’s own self-imposed rules ‘by the end of the parliament’.
Fortunately, there were really no (zero) personal finance announcements of any kind – you could almost hear the sigh of relief in the professional community who are still feeling the impact of the Autumn budget which was perhaps the most impactful in over a decade.
All of this is good, however there is a sense that we are perhaps just in the eye of the storm. Almost as soon as the chancellor sat down on Wednesday, the rumour mill then turned its attention to the budget in the Autumn (which really doesn’t feel that far away) and how Rachel Reeves would need to further increase taxes to plug what many feel is an ever-growing gap between income and expenditure.
In light of this backdrop, our message to clients remains the same – please take action!
Implement the planning solutions you can now, while we still have the chance to do so.
I think we can safely say that under this Government, the Estate Planning landscape is unlikely to get any better, however it could well get a lot worse!
