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For many contractors, the Christmas break finished as quickly as it started. A whirlwind few days of stressed-out travelling and mince pie gorging is all that your average contractor can expect before its back to work.
But the New Year period does offer some space for quiet reflection.
Many contractors will have set New Year’s Resolutions and many of these will have centred on money.
Christmas is just around the corner and while limited company owners are all a bit old to be sending letters to Santa Claus, we thought we’d draw up a different wish list – one for the chancellor to read before his Autumn Statement.
1) Reappraise the dividend tax changes
From April 2016, changes to the rules governing dividend tax payments will make lots of limited company owners worse off.
The changes affecting limited companies will see the notional 10% tax credit on dividends abolished and replaced with a £5,000 tax free dividend allowance. Over this threshold, dividends could be taxed at a rate of up to 38.1% (for additional rate payers).
Amid controversy over the Summer Budget four-pronged attack on the contracting sector, a separate and potentially troublesome government crackdown has gone relatively unnoticed.
In amongst the Britain’s Got Talent audition that the chancellor took part in yesterday were some announcements regarding the economy and some good news for contractors. We won’t repeat his numerous Christmas Cracker jokes but here’s the 5 key takeaways for contractors;
In response to a petition asking the government to reconsider their proposed dividend tax hike, HM Treasury published a statement which, according to critics, was out of touch with the contracting industry and the needs of small businesses.
The reply was published on the Parliament website where, once a petition reaches 10,000 signatures it must receive an official response from the government.
One contractor writing for IT Contracting dissected the government’s statement and explained paragraph by paragraph why it was “factually wrong” and removed from the realities of running a small business.
Several weeks on, the contracting and freelancing sector has had time to digest George Osborne’s ‘emergency’ summer Budget. In case you missed it, the chancellor had several nasty surprises up his sleeve on 8th July as he delivered the first all-Conservative Budget since November 1996. In what was described by industry commentators as a four-pronged attack on limited company contractors, the MP for Tatton announced that:
