Stamp duty will be cut for 98% of people
Under the old rules, Stamp Duty Land Tax was paid at a single rate on the entire price of a property.
Now, you will only pay the rate of tax on the part of the property price within each tax band – like income tax.
e.g. Under the old rules, if you bought a house for £185,000, you would have had to pay 1% tax on the full amount – a total of £1,850.
Under the new rules you don’t start paying tax until the property price goes over £125,000 threshold, so in our example, only the £60,000 would be taxed currently at 2%- a total of £1,200.
For more information, read our article here
The tax-free personal allowance is being increased
The personal allowance – the amount you earn before you have to start paying income tax – will be increased again from £10,000 to £10,600 in 2015 to 2016.
Spouses will inherit their partner’s individual saving account (ISA) benefits after death
Currently, if someone passes away they can’t pass on their ISA to their spouse, even if they have saved the money together. Now ISA benefits can be passed to a spouse or civil partner, this will be an additional ISA allowance which they will be able to use from 6 April 2015.
The surviving spouse or civil partner will be allowed to invest as much into their own ISA as their spouse used to have, in addition to their normal annual ISA limit.
Business rates will be cut and capped, with extra help for local and high street businesses
The ‘high street discount’ for around 300,000 shops, pubs, cafes and restaurants will go up from £1,000 to £1,500, from April 2015 to March 2016.
Small Business Rate Relief has been doubled for a further year.
Continue to cap the annual increase in business rates at 2% from April 2015 to March 2016.
Long term plans for infrastructure
This includes £15 billion on roads, nearly £6 billion funding for local road improvements, and over £2.3 billion towards over 1,400 flooding and coastal erosion protection schemes.