Spring Budget 2020 Summary

As today’s Budget speech was the first for about 17 months, we could have been forgiven for forgetting what Budget Day was like. We don’t recall tubs being thumped quite so enthusiastically in the past, but at least no one could fall asleep during a Rishi Sunak Budget speech. It is confirmed that we have another Budget in the Autumn to look forward to.

The absence of a Budget in the calendar year 2019 did give rise to some discussion as to when was the last time this happened. The first Budget statement to the House was made by Sir Robert Walpole in the early 1720s, and was designed to restore public confidence following the bursting of the South Sea Bubble. We are reliably informed that there was no Budget in 1768, and this seems to have been because the Government of the day knew it would not have been able to get a Budget through the House. So not much different to 2019 in that respect.

The news that e-publications will be VAT zero-rated from December corrects an obvious anomaly and will be welcome news to many of us. The Chancellor also talked quite a bit today about ‘levelling up’. Perhaps it was not until he mentioned the filling in of around 50 million potholes that we knew what he may really have meant by that. As for the piece in the Budget Red Book headed ‘Business rates public lavatories relief’, one may wonder if the reduction in business rates will enable those lavatories to pay current black market prices for loo roll.

But, time to move on to the Budget proposals themselves, with just a note to say that this summary is intended to cover significant changes to the main taxes, as opposed to everything announced today ― let’s get this done!