Finance expert hails ‘great news’ for retiral plans

A north-east personal finance expert hailed the Budget as “great news” for people funding and planning for their retirement.

Graham Burnett, director and chartered financial planner at accountancy firm Johnston Carmichael, said: “Despite rumours of reductions in pension tax relief, with the Chancellor recently commenting that pensions tax relief is “eye-wateringly expensive” and costs the (UK) government around £40 billion per annum, no changes were announced.

“Additional positive changes that were confirmed are the increases in the pension lifetime allowance and the Junior ISA (individual savings account) allowance to £1.055 million and £4,368m respectively.”

The government will increase the National Living Wage by 4.9%, from £7.83 to £8.21, from April 2019, benefiting an estimated million workers.

Chancellor Philip Hammond delivered on a government’s commitment to increase the personal allowance to £12,500 and higher rate threshold to £50,000 in April 2019, a year earlier than planned, cutting taxes for about 32 million people.

Mr Hammond said: “I didn’t come into politics to put taxes up,” adding that improved public finance forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility meant he did not have to. 2.4

“A tax cut for 32 million people, £130 in the pocket of a typical basic rate taxpayer, meaning since 2015 we’ve taken 1.7m people out of tax altogether and nearly one million people out of higher rate tax.”

A Treasury source said the changes would see about 1.74 billion people taken out of the tax system altogether.

The rollout of Universal Credit is being delayed again, with a new target date of December 2023 for all claimants to be transferred to the new benefit.