It’s said that a week is a long time in politics, and we’ve had proof of that again recently! When we published our look ahead at what the Autumn Statement may contain, the Chancellor had been warning that he’d need to make difficult decisions, which had seemingly been endorsed by both the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

And yet, with 24 hours to go, the Autumn Statement was being billed as the ‘Autumn Statement for Growth’ and there were already reports of tax cuts for businesses, to encourage investment and improvements in productivity!

What was actually announced?

The biggest announcements were:

• The main rate of Employees National Insurance will be reduced to 10% from the 6th January 2024.
• Class 2 National Insurance will be abolished from April 2024.
• Class 4 National Insurance will be reduced to 8% from April 2024.
• The National Living Wage will increase to £11.44 an hour from April 2024.
• The State Pension payment will increase by 8.5% from April 2024.
• The temporary ‘Full expensing‘ form of capital allowances has been made permanent.
• The 75% business rates discount for retail, hospitality and leisure has been extended for another 12 months.

The Summary…

To access our summary, click on the button below:

If you’d like to read the summary in a single column format, you can access that here.

If you’d like to read the Chancellor’s speech in full, you can do that here.

With 110 areas included in today’s announcements to drive growth, there will definitely be more detail to come. We’ll work through those, and the inevitable small print, and will provide updates with this extra information as appropriate.

As always, if you have any specific questions from any of the announcements so far or the impact they may have on your personal or business affairs, please get in touch.