The calling of the General Election for 8 June had a significant impact on the announcements made in the Budget given in March 2017. Many changes announced were removed from the final Finance Act that was put through. It is expected that many of these will just be deferred until a later date, depending on the government in place following the General Election.
A couple of key removals are listed below:
The government has backed off from reducing the money purchase annual allowance (MPAA).
The measure to reduce the MPAA from £10,000 to £4,000, announced in the Budget has been dropped.
The MPAA is the amount a person who has already begun drawing on their pension can pay in one year back into their retirement savings without a tax charge applying.
Tax Free Dividend Allowance to remain at £5,000
Similarly another announcement in the Budget, a cut in the dividend allowance from the current £5,000 to £2,000 from the new tax year in April 2018, has also been dropped.
Finance (No 2) Bill 2017 was finally published on 20 March 2017 following a draft in December 2016. It was, as noted at the time, one of the longest on record.
On 25 April 2017 it passed all of its House of Commons Stages after the Second Reading. The House of Lords dealt with its Stages on 26 April and Finance Act 2017 was granted Royal Assent on 27 April.
This was achieved so quickly by removing almost all of the Bill in Committee Stage.
This was done to pass the essential elements of the Bill (such as tax and duty rates for 2017/18) before Parliament shuts down for the 8 June General Election.