Winners and losers
March 16, 2016
George Osborne has walked a tight rope in his latest Budget with all of the winners being counter balanced by losers. In choosing his losers he's followed some familiar themes.
For large corporates the news is definitely mixed, An extra 1% off the rate of Corporation Tax, with the promise of more to come, but further restrictions on deductions such as interest and losses taking effect more or less immediately.
Buy-to let investors, private equity and banks have all been targeted in recent budgets and he's returned to them again. Residential property and carried interest, that is the incentive given to private equity managers, won't benefit from the reductions in capital gains tax.
The difficulty the Chancellor has is that if he does want to shower cash on particular parts of the economy he has to take it from somewhere else, and that means in practice either creating a new tax, or restricting a relief.