Today the Chancellor was forced to doing something about the increases in cost of living. Hence, the fuel duty cuts, employee and self employed threshold national insurance increases but not too much else.

If people are still not feeling spring-like, the promise of a 1% cut in the income tax rate from April 2024.

Dig in a bit further and you decide:

April 2022 is the first in a series of important annual April tax changes:

• April 2022 - increase in national insurance and dividend tax by 1.25%
• April 2023 - increase in corporation tax from 19% to 19%/26.5%/25%
• April 2024 - MTD for income tax for sole traders and landlords with sales/rents over £10k
• April 2025 - MTD for partnerships and LLPs without a corporate partner

For now, we're focussing on the forthcoming April 2022 change and how you may want to react. Firstly, let's look at how much this might cost you:

This week we heard about a new 1.25% tax to fund health and social care, but as only £5.4bn of the £36bn raised over the next 3 years will be spent on social care, this seems to be another tax 'pot' such as national insurance and income tax from which to fund the NHS.

Unfortunately, tax simplicity and clarity is something we never see from governments making it harder for everyone, including HMRC, to understand the tax system. So how might you respond?

There is much to be happy about in today's Budget, where the magic money trees are well and truly thriving!

Businesses will benefit from many announcements, particularly those who trade from a property, have one or two employees, and need a new car!

Business rates are abolished for a year for rateable values of less than £51k and these same businesses will receive a £3k grant, as a response to the Coronavirus but it's also part of the overall picture of dealing with competition from Amazon and other online retailers.