6 March 2024 • 3 minute read

Spring Budget 2024 - International

Written by:Ben Brown Matt Davies Clara Boyd Jesse Dalton Elizabeth EmersonKeunyoung Oh

The UK held its Spring Budget on 6 March and it was very much aimed at individual voters ahead of the impending General Election. As a result, there was little in the way of updates for businesses.

That said, there were several announcements of note, and we are expecting further details to be announced at the forthcoming Tax Administration and Maintenance Day on 18 April.

Consultation on extending permanent “full expensing” to leased assets

In the last Autumn Statement, the Chancellor made “full expensing” permanent – allowing companies to write off the full cost of qualifying plant and machinery expenditure on certain assets in the year of investment. The government has now announced that it intends to consider extending the full expensing regime to cover leased assets, and draft legislation will be published shortly for consultation.

Implementation of tax transparency regimes

The government is consulting on the implementation of the OECD:

Cryptoasset Reporting Framework (CARF), and the government’s approach to its optional elements. The CARF provides a new framework for automatic exchange of tax-relevant information on transactions in cryptoassets
Amendments to the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), which update the rules to include new types of assets and improve its operation.

The government is also seeking views on the potential benefits and drawbacks of extending the CARF/CRS international standards to require UK reporting entities to include information on UK residents.

Replacement of ‘non-dom’ tax regime with a residence-based regime

The government intends to abolish the remittance basis of taxation for non-UK domiciled individuals, which provides a favourable tax regime for individuals whose permanent home or domicile is outside the UK, and replace it with a residence-based regime with effect from 6 April 2025. Under the new regime, individuals who opt in will not pay UK tax on foreign income and gains for the first four years of tax residence, provided they have been non-UK resident for ten years. There will be transitional arrangements for existing non-doms claiming the remittance basis.

You can read more about this in our Personal and Employment Taxes update.

Real estate tax changes

There are several proposed changes to the real estate tax regime, including the:

Imminent introduction of legislation to create the Reserved Investor Fund (Contractual Scheme) (RIF) – a new unauthorised UK funds vehicle to promote investment into UK real estate.
Abolition of the stamp duty land tax “multiple dwellings relief” with effect from 1 June 2024 (subject to transitional rules).

You can read more about this in our Real Estate update.

Reduction in employee national insurance contributions

From 6 April 2024, the main rate of employee national insurance contributions is being cut from 10% to 8%. There was some signalling of further cuts, or reforms, to national insurance contributions in the future, but no substantive detail was provided.