April 3rd, 2014.
Budget 2014: What It Means for Your Business
The new financial year is here and if you’ve been keeping up with financial news then you will know exactly how the new budget will affect you. If you’ve been lagging behind the news or have become confused by all the politics surrounding it then here’s an extremely simplified breakdown of how the budget will affect your company.
Import & Export
This was touched on a lot in George Osborne’s speech, and for good reason. Britain needs to increase the amount of exporting we do, and now the government is taking financial action in order to facilitate this. They have now doubled the amount of finance available to the UK Export Finance’s lending programme to £3bn – this will allow more competitive financing and help UK companies sustain trade overseas.
British Manufacturers
In recent years there has been a huge decline in the number of British manufacturers, and the government has realised that we need to do more to support them. The changes put in place to help tackle this issue included a new energy bill package which should reduce the cost of energy that’s used for production in manufacturing. This £7bn investment should help to increase the number of companies in the UK producing products that can be exported overseas.
Fuel Freeze
Any business that carries out a lot of driving will be delighted to hear that the VAT on fuel prices will continue at the current rate. This freeze will allow you to calculate the cost of fuel much more easily and allow you to forecast expenses for the future. Theoretically there are also savings being made from not having to pay more as fuel costs go up.
More Finance for Small Business
There has been an obvious lack of financial support from the government, despite their incentive for banks to loan at a lower rate. The new budget has increased the finance for the Apprenticeships Grants for Employers scheme to help get more young people into employment. Around £85million will be provided in over 100,000 grants between 2014 and 2016, which can help small businesses to grow at a much lower cost.
Encouraging Investment
Several steps have been taken in order to ensure that small businesses and start-ups take off, one of these schemes is the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme. This scheme is designed to encourage investors to support small and growing businesses by making it much easier to gain tax relief off their investments – including commercial property investments. Changes like this are designed to encourage both domestic and overseas investments and to benefit the UK economy.
Just how well all these changes will actually impact in the real world is yet to be discovered. If everything falls into place and works seamlessly then we could be in for a much quicker end to the recession than previously predicted.
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