UK Savers, Landlords Are Only Starting to Feel Labour’s Heat
Taxes will likely keep rising on Britons’ and their assets.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves resisted the pressure from her own party for onerous wealth taxes in her first budget, as she focused revenue raising on business. Nevertheless, her shakeup of the UK fiscal landscape will still have profound implications, not only for the super wealthy but for the merely affluent.
That Reeves didn't reduce either the tax breaks or the annual amounts that can be saved into a personal pension scheme of £60,000 ($78,000), or £20,000 each for a married couple into tax-free Individual Savings Accounts merits a sigh of relief. Nor did she alter the tax breaks on startup or early-stage corporate investments. Furthermore, for the vast majority, inheritance tax was left unchanged as was the ability to gift assets tax-free seven years before death. Taxes on capital gains were raised only modestly (and not at all for property). The middle classes largely caught a break, for now.