Budget 2008
On Wednesday 12 March 2008, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Alistair Darling presented the Budget to the Houses of Commons.
It was Darling's first budget and he reverted to tradition by using Gladstone's red case. Apart from that piece of theatre, to all intents and purposes it was quite dull - the highlights being the deferral of Income Shifting provisions and the lowlights being the additional duty on alcohol and cigarettes - generally there was little presented that was not already in the public domain.
The good news for freelancers is that the implementation of the Income Shifting provisions for husband and wife companies has been delayed to extend the period of consultation with a view to legislating in the Finance Bill of 2009 rather than this year.
There are also the changes that we were already aware of such as the Annual Investment Allowance which allows a 100% write off of capital investments up to £50,000, and also the change of emphasis onto lower emission forms of transport.
The devil will of course be in the detail which will become clearer over the next few weeks. We will be updating the site with comment regularly over the next few weeks.