185 - Budget Review with Chantal

Champ Consultants is an award-winning independent firm of highly experienced, qualified accountants and tax advisors based in Caterham, providing a fully comprehensive range of accountancy and tax services. If you would like simple but creative answers to your tax problems, call Champ Consultants, your business partner, on 01883 349 300. Good morning and welcome to your business hour with me, Chantal. I'm actually currently live in the Ridge Radio studio, as I always am, on a Friday morning at 9am.

But if you wanted to message me, I'm actually going to be talking about the budget today. I'm going to be discussing the things that take place in the budget, what happened and how you might be affected in that. So if you want to ask me a direct question on anything that might affect you or anything you want me to clarify... you can actually WhatsApp me live right now.

And I am on WhatsApp on 07769978611. So if you want to WhatsApp me, do that now. I'll probably be here till about 9.30am.

And otherwise, you can listen again as usual on podcast. Well, if you've got any messages, then please do. You can Message me on however you want to, but probably Instagram would be the best way. Instagram or Facebook, Your Business Hour, where you can message me any of your questions there.

So here we go. So my opinion on the budget. It wasn't one of the most exciting budgets, and I'm sure any of you who've read would know and agree with me. it was probably one of the most boring budgets around as usual.

But we have to still go through what happened and anything else that might have taken place. So let's look at just a few things. There were some things that were actually read out quite loudly and some things that went under the radar, shall we say. So one thing that He did mention, and oh my God, I got so excited about, he went, I'm introducing a new founder's relief for people who own, have founded their own business and sell their business.

And it would be a 10% capital gains tax relief with up to a 10 million lifetime limit. Now, for many of you who have been in the business long enough will know this is the old entrepreneur's relief. What's he done is he brought it back again. Oh my God, I was so excited.

I thought to myself, he's actually listened to us business owners who we grow our businesses, we thrive our businesses and we sell it and then we have to pay a fortune in tax even though we've made so much risk. Oh my God, was I so wrong? No, he didn't do that. He actually screwed us business owners and that's saying it politely.

So what he actually did to us business owners is that when we sell our business, when as a business owner, if you sell your business, you're entitled to something called BADR, which was Entrepreneur's Relief, now BADR, Business Asset Disposal Relief. And it was the first million pounds was at 10%. A few years ago, that went increased to 14%. Now that's currently at 18%.

If you earn more than a million pounds, it's a lifetime allowance. Then you suddenly start paying 24%. Well, he's just half that. So now he said, you don't have a million pound allowance anymore.

You've got half a million pound allowance. So £ 500, 000. So what happened to this founder's relief? It did not happen for us founders.

We are actually pooed upon, shall we say. So yeah, so BADR now provides a reduced limit of £ 500, 000. So that means from April 2027, It's only the first half a million pounds in a lifetime. So if you've used Entrepreneur's Relief before or BADR Relief in the past and you've used more than half a million going forward, you're not going to get it anymore because it's a lifetime limit.

And anything more than that, we're just going to be at the normal 24%. So if this is something that you were actually thinking about, thinking to yourself, actually, I'm contemplating maybe selling my business. it's now the time to do it. Because if you do it before the 1st of April, 2027, you've got a million pounds at 18%.

Whereas if you do it after the 1st of April, 2027, you've now only got half a million pounds at 18%. So is that worth doing now? Maybe it's worth contemplating if it is something you're actually thinking about. I mean, I wouldn't recommend you go out and sell businesses just for the sake of selling your business.

It might take you a bit longer than four or five months as well. But it's definitely worth, if you are on the range or if you are considering it, do it now. So let's look at this actual founder's relief. Well, definitely not aimed at us business owners.

It's aimed at what I will call much bigger companies than probably any of you lot listening to me right now or any of you listening to me future on podcast. It's aimed at people who are I've got big growing companies. There are some really strict limits. There are some limits that you, not limits, I'd say, some conditions that you have to adhere to in order to be able to get this founder's relief.

And they include that you have to own more than 25% of the business. Well, that's not really that hard if you're a founder. We can say, okay, we can tick that box. That's not so bad.

You have to be a new growing company. So you have to be potentially innovative. So you have to be money growing into research and development. So that's another one.

That's not all of our businesses. You're not going to get that with your local hairdressers and builders and those ones. They're not really going to be research and developing. So that might rule out quite a lot of people from that point of view.

Then we've got the. Employees. You've got to have a minimum of employees. And they, 15, you've got to have a minimum of 15 employees.

And they have to have grown 25% over the last three years. So over a three-year period, they have to have grown over 25% a year for the three years. But the biggest one is this £ 10 million turnover limit. Now, I don't know about you, but if I had a £ 10 million company don't necessarily know whether you'd still be owning 25% as a founder.

Don't forget, you have to have actually started this business from scratch and then get it to a £ 10 million turnover business and have 25% growth on that £ 10 million over a three-year period. So these are huge conditions and I'm not going to dwell on them because I don't really know anybody in that market Most of my clients are not in that market and most of my clients are not going to be interested in that one because it's not going to apply to them. The one that is going to apply to them is the reduction in BADR, which obviously is not going to make them happy people.

So that's the biggest one that we thought to ourselves, oh my God, what's going on here? And then obviously we've been messed up on that one. So some of the other things that have been introduced are We're going to do a bit on businesses first, see how these might be affected, and then we'll look at individuals. So we have got the small business rate relief for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses.

And this will increase from £ 12, 000 to £ 18, 000. Now, this was actually introduced back in the, I think it was 2017, 2015, around then, the £ 12, 000 limit. And if it had gone up to inflation, it would currently be at £ 18, 000 anyway. So all he's actually done is bring that small business rate relief threshold in line with inflation, which, to tell you the truth, is the only thing that has been brought up to in line with inflation.

Because as we know, personal allowances have not. You can tell that I'm real vengeance with this budget at the moment. But anyway, so. Small business rates relief, it is going to be great for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses.

And those that have a rateable value of between £ 12, 000 and £ 18, 000, they will now no longer have to pay the small rates relief. Well, probably fall out of rates because they'll be eligible for the small rates relief, which will be a great tax saving to them because business rates are a tax as well as anything else. So it's not like they're not a taxable item. Business rates are taxable as well.

Then we have what's known as capital allowances. So what is capital allowances? So when you actually buy an asset as a limited company or a business as well, so you could be a sole trader, a partnership or a limited company to benefit from capital allowances. What actually happens is you buy this asset and then when you've bought this asset, it goes to your balance sheet.

And from an accountant's point of view, we depreciate that asset depending on what we believe the lifetime of that asset will be. Now, that's an accountant adjustment. And for tax, it's added back. We're not allowed depreciation for tax purposes.

But the taxman says, OK, in order for you to benefit from that, what I'm actually going to give you is capital allowances. Now, there are different rates of capital allowances. There's the annual investment allowance, which is £ 100, 000. on the assets and there is a threshold on the amount that can be invested in there.

There is also your first year allowance. which has gone up from 40% to 50%. And that's in April 2027. So we sort of helped a little bit there.

But then you've got your general pool allowance, which and you've got all your other assets, if you've exceeded all your thresholds, which is your basic standard writing down allowance. And that's actually gone down. So that means that's gone down from 14% to 12%, which means that you actually have less of a tax deductible item going forward, which means more corporation tax will be paid. So that is one of the ones that are going to affect the majority of businesses that invest in assets that are probably...

considered as pool assets or might go above their annual investment allowance or their first year allowances or anything else in those ones. So they're the capital allowance ones and the first year allowance ones. Now, I'm just looking through my notes here for more ones relating to companies. So we've only got a couple more here, really.

and businesses, that's our mileage rates. So when we use our own car for business purposes, we're entitled to claim business miles to our employer, or to if it's our own company, we can claim it against our company. And the current rate, which was introduced in April 2026, was 45p. And now from April 2026, went to 55p for the first 10,000 miles, and then it was 25p thereafter.

So from April 2027, that 55p is actually going to stay permanent. So we are still going to have the 55p for the first 10,000 miles. However, the 25p is actually going to go to 35p. So we will have a 55p for the first 10,000 miles on your vehicle and then 35p a mile thereafter.

There is no ceiling to the amount of. That you can claim. It's just the first 10,000 miles at 55p and then the rest will be at 35p. That's not going to be until April 2027.

So at the moment, we've still currently still just got the 25p as well. Now, it had been speculated in the past that direct debits for VAT and PAYE will become mandatory. Now, we know that sometimes things can change and things might not happen, as we saw in this budget, and I'll explain later. But the direct debits for VAT and PAYE payments will become mandatory from April 2029.

Do I think that one will change in the future if there was a change of government or if this government remains? No, I don't actually think that will change. Because VAT and PAYE are probably some of the ones that HMRC get paid late. And when you are collecting your VAT and PAYE on behalf of your employees for PAYE and collecting the VAT on behalf of your customers, basically, for VAT, you're actually acting as almost like a bank.

You're acting as a third party agent. for HMRC. So if you think about it, when you collect your pay, your staff, your wages, you agree to pay them a gross pay. Then from that gross pay, you deduct the PAYE and national insurance, any pension contributions or anything like that.

You pay the net amount over to your employee and you pay the PAYE and NIC and any student loans or anything else over to HMRC or pension companies. So you have acted on behalf of HMRC by collecting that PAYE from your employees and passing that over to HMRC. So now you're acting as their agent, shall we say. And cash flow point of view, sometimes people pay these quarterly.

Sometimes VAT is paid monthly. Sometimes VAT is paid quarterly. PAYE paid quarterly, paid monthly. And HMRC might have to wait for this money.

You might be late making the payment because it's not on a direct debit system. And so from a cash flow point of view, HMRC want their money. There has been quite a few tax laws and tax cases that have gone through where you might have umbrella companies where the PAYE and NIC was deducted from the contractor and but was never actually paid to HMRC. And there was quite a big case recently where there was quite a large amount of money, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds that was deducted from individuals and never paid over to HMRC.

So this, I suppose, is there to help make, prevent that happening. It's not actually going to happen until April, 2029. I don't actually see why it can take that long for it to actually happen because the I mean, most of us pay our VAT, I would imagine, by direct debit. I don't know if one pays their PAYE by direct debit.

I don't. I pay my VAT by direct debit, but I don't pay my PAYE by direct debit. I don't know why. I just don't, actually.

But I don't see why we have to wait till 2029 to do that. I suppose it's a benefit to the individual businesses. But to HMRC, if they really want the cash flow, they might as well do it now. Don't see why.

So the only thing that that might be, maybe it might be brought forward. But considering our next tax year is April 2027, I doubt they'll bring it into April 28. They might just probably wait till April 29. Or maybe they're just devising some system on how they're actually going to fine or penalise people if they haven't got that.

So, yeah, so that's direct debits mandatory from April 2029 for VAT and PAYE. Another quite big thing, I think, is HMRC's powers. Now, the Chancellor has said that HMRC are actually going to have more powers. He's going to employ more compliance officers, more inspectors, more collectors, and he's going to modernise the system.

So there will be From July 2029, is what HMRC has said, well, the Chancellor said, that HMRC will be able to recover lower value unpaid tax debts through regular instalments directly from the taxpayer's bank accounts where they can afford to pay, but repeatedly fail to do so. So what does that actually mean in plain English, Chantal? Well, what it actually means is that HMRC will have the access, the ability to access your bank account. If you repeatedly owe them small amounts of money and are not paying it, they will access your bank account and take it directly from your bank account.

That's quite scary. It's something that's not going to happen until July 2029. But it is something to be aware of, that HMRC will have the power to be able to do that. And with the employment of more compliance officers, more inspectors, more collectors, I think as an accountant, we can probably see a lot more inquiries taking place, a lot more VAT compliance checks, PAYE compliance checks, and generally just ad hoc tax checks on self-assessments.

I've seen a And I don't think it's necessarily aimed at specific targets. I think it is generally more are just generally taking place. So that is a big one that they will have access to in the future and that one we need to be aware of. So I actually have a note here that says that HMRC will get an additional 670 compliance officers by 2930.

strengthening their ability to tackle non-compliance and recover unpaid debt. And this is in addition to the previous recruitment drive of 5,500 officers. So they are going for it big time. And yes, they are going to be looking at it from a stronger point of view of collecting money directly from your bank accounts if they need to do so.

OK, so I think that that's generally the big ones for businesses and companies. Now let's look at self-assessments and then we'll go on to just the everyday person. So MTD ITSA, this was introduced in April 2026 for any individual who does a self-assessment tax return with self-employment income and property income. In order to fall into the MTD ITSA, quarterly updates requirements, you had to have total gross income.

So that's not your profit after expenses. It's the amount of money you've physically taken from your self-employment, property income, individually or combined, in the year to April 2025 of more than £ 50, 000. Now, for the year to April 2026, that has been reduced to £ 30, 000. And for those individuals, you will fall into MTD ITSA from April 2027.

In the current tax year, the 26 to 27 year, that will be for individuals with gross income of £ 20, 000. And you will fall into MTD ITSA from April 2028. Now, this is the first year that we're currently in, the April 26 to 27 year. This is our first year.

And at the moment, we are aware that if you're late with filing, that there are no penalties. HMRC are not imposing penalties, late filing penalties, if you're late in the year to 26-27 for first joiners. However, for those that fall into it in 26-27, late filing penalties will incur for you from April 27. However, for those that are joining in April 20-27, Now, that included those that were non-resident in the 25 year because you had a year's leave, Ray.

So you actually don't fall into it till April 2027. And for individuals whose turnover, so money in from self-employment, land and property, individually or combined, of more than £ 30, 000, you fall into MTD quarterly updates from April 2027. you will also have a year's grace period for late filings. So you will not have to pay late filing penalties in that year, 27-28, if 27-28 is the first year that you fall into it.

So that's a nice benefit for those that fall into it there. However, he did say, Mr. Chancellor, that he will, from April 2029... taxpayers who are within self-assessment, which includes MTD for income tax, will have to make smaller, more regular contributions to their tax bill throughout the year.

Now, us accountants have always speculated that once MTD income tax was introduced, give it a while and you'll start paying quarterly tax bills on that MTD. It's a figure. And this to me is exactly what they're going to do. They haven't actually said, how often you're going to be paying.

They haven't actually said how the calculation will be made, but that's not until April, 2029. So we've still got a bit of time. According to the government, and I quote here, he says, this will, speak quote marks, help taxpayers budget and plan for their tax obligations, reducing the risk of large unexpected tax bills and it making it less likely that they fall behind on tax due and and build up debt, close quote marks. So according to the government, they're actually doing it to help you.

To stop that January and July payment that you have twice a year, you probably now have four. But how it will be calculated is a matter of watch this space. But I think it's something that we've always said would happen in the end. In other countries around the world, this does happen.

And I think that it is something that, yes, we've always speculated will happen. And. Yeah, basically, it's here. So from it's not a major surprise to us accountants, it's I mean, I've always advised my clients that this will happen one day and we've just got to make just know when it will happen.

And I think this is the situation that it's here now and from April twenty twenty nine. Will that change? I doubt it very much. It's a way of them collecting their money early.

It's a way of them being able to make sure that they get their money on time. No huge coincidence, might I add, that this falls in just before the July 2029 powers that I spoke about, where HMRC have the power in order to access bank accounts. Well, Is that coincidental after the April 29 payments are going to be introduced? I don't know.

We'll have to wait and see how they're going to access those bank accounts and also how are they actually going to make for those smaller contributions with HMRC as well. So that's one of our ones for our smaller businesses. And let me have a quick look. minimum wage rates.

I think that's another one that we need to look at. Now, this is obviously going to affect limited companies, all employers, but it's also going to affect employees as an individual. So the national living wage rate. So this is for people over the age of 21.

And they're all going up. They're all going up by just short of 4%. But if we look at the current rates and what they're going to go up to, and this will go up from April 2027. So if we look at the national living wage rate, that's currently £ 12.

71. From April 2027, that will go to £ 13. 21. And that's for anybody over the age of 21.

Now, if you're working seven days a week, five days a seven hours a day, five days a week, so 260 working days a year, £ 13. 21 equates to roughly a £ 24, 000 salary. So you can say that the national living minimum wage rate will be £ 24, 000. Now, I'm just going to write that down because I've just thought of something that I want to talk to you about in a moment and how that might affect people.

So, You then have the 18 to 20 year olds rate, and that is going from £ 10. 85 an hour to £ 11. 27. The apprentices rates for apprentices aged 21 and over is going from £ 12 to £ 12.

71. And the under 18 apprentices rate is going from £ 8 to £ 8. 30. So I think the majority of people are more interested in the national living wage rate, which affects everybody aged 21 and over.

And that's going from £ 12. 71 to £ 13. 21 an hour. Now, as I said, that's £ 24, 000 gross salary.

Now, if you think, when do you start paying 24%? When do you start paying? Sorry, I'm about to sneeze. Excuse me.

Okay, so higher rate tax band. Higher rate tax band kicks in when you're on a salary of £ 50, 000. £ 50, 270 to be precise. So that is not even twice what the national living wage rate is.

So the national living wage rate is £ 24, 000 a year. And you will start paying higher rate tax when you're on £ 50, 270 a year. So when I was much younger, that actually used to be, the national minimum wage rate was actually about a quarter higher what you would have to start paying before you got to your high rate taxpayer. But because the minimum wage rates are constantly going up and the personal allowances of £ 12, 570, our tax-free band of £ 12, 570, our higher rate band of £ 50, 275 and now our additional rate band of £ 125 are stuck.

This is basically fiscal drag. It's where taxman is going to make his most amount of money because what he's saying is all these extra monies that are going to be paid so your salaries are constantly your salary might go up your personal allowance is going to stay the same your higher rate tax band is going to stay the same so as your salaries go up you are going to pay more tax at higher rates potentially so more people will be pushed into higher rate tax bands which will mean taxman will get more money So I know that £ 24, 000 is not near £ 50, 000.

But if you are on a job with the national minimum wage or you had a couple jobs at national minimum wage, not necessarily every day of the week at full time, or you might have a bit of extra money or you might have some rental property, you are going to be pushed into these higher rate tax packets and you will end up paying more tax. So The budget is great when it gives us all these tax savings and whatever else, but it never actually helps us all the time that it's stuck its personal allowance where it is.

And where it's kept its personal allowance at a static position, we are actually worse off because of hidden tax rises, shall we say. He might say, I'm not going to increase income tax. I'm not going to increase tax for the working man or working woman or whatever else. But by not increasing personal allowance, it's effectively what he's done, isn't it really?

Let's be serious. Champ Consultants is an award-winning independent firm of highly experienced, qualified accountants and tax advisors based in Caterham, providing a fully comprehensive range of accountancy and tax services. If you would like simple but creative answers to your tax problems, call Champ Consultants, your business partner, on 01883 349 300. 01883 349 300 welcome back to your business hour with me chantal on my budget special shall we say so we've talked about companies and self-employment self-employed people and businesses i'm going to talk about people in general now so there was a bit of a an announcement made, I can't think it was in the last budget, where the Chancellor said that the ISA limits were going to change for people under and over the age of 65.

Well, it was quite interesting, actually, because he'd actually scrapped that one. So the Chancellor Healey decided that, no, we're going to ignore that one. And we're still going to have our standard 20,000 ISA allowance, which can be 20,000 into a cash ISA, or 20,000 into a stocks ISA with no age limits. So it was originally going to change, but we're going to go back to how we had it before.

So you've still got your 20,000 limit and you can put it in whatever you want to put it in effectively. He also announced that he was going to introduce from April, 2029, the government will introduce a new first time buyer ISA, which replaces the lifetime ISA. And this is to make it a bit more easier for people buying their first house because with a lifetime ISA, your first house can't be worth more than a certain amount of money. Whereas I believe that the new ISA, the new first time buyer ISA will change that, which will mean that it can go towards your first home and hopefully there won't be a limit on that.

So we'll have to watch that space to find out exactly how that will work. But that actually is not going to come into play until April 2029. So we've still got a bit more time before that happens. Now, the next one I find really sneaky because in the last budget, we were told that in April 2026, dividend tax was going to be increased by 2% from April 2026 and from April 2077, property tax and savings tax was going to be increased by 2% as well.

But in this budget, he just basically very sneakily said an extra 2% will apply from April 2027 for savings and property income. Now, if you were not thinking, you probably would have thought to yourself, yeah, you said that in the last budget, an extra 2%. But no, he meant an extra 2%. So from April 2027, property income will now be taxed at 24%, 44% and 49%, as will savings income.

So income on your bank interest and your property income from April 2027 will now be taxed at 4% more than what it currently is at now. you would still only be able to have the 20% mortgage tax relief potentially. Maybe it might go up. I don't know.

We'll have to watch this space. But the tax rates there are the 24%, the 44% and 49%. Now that's huge. And it's quite sneaky the way he did that because effectively he snuck it in as if to say, oh, it's only an extra 2%.

And you probably thought, yeah, we were told that 2%. But you didn't say it's 2% on the 2% that you've already got, making it 24, 44 and 49. And I think the majority of people who have got rental property, this is quite huge. And for the people with savings, this is quite huge as well.

And yeah, that's quite a big jump. And that comes into effect from April 2027. So they're quite big. Another one is the tax on pensions.

Now, the triple lock is still in place, which means that when the new state pension is paid out in April 2027, most people who receive a full state pension will receive more than their personal allowance. So the personal allowance is stuck at £ 12, 517. But if you receive a full state pension from April 2027, you might receive more than that amount. And it's speculated that amount will be £ 13, 037.

So that is more. So it's always been said that the taxman, how's he going to tax it? Is it going to be fair that if your only source of income is a state pension, you're going to have to pay back some of your state pension as tax. Well, he's introduced a, I don't know, what's he called it?

A pension tax relief, I suppose, really. I think that's what he's called it. So this is for people who total income is less than £ 13, 037. So if your total income is less than £ 13, 037, you will not be paying any tax on that.

And this ensures that pensioners whose income is up to that value of the new state pension don't have the administrative burden of paying tax. It doesn't have to all be under state pension is what he has said. So it can be state pension. And if you worked a little bit extra to top up your salary, top up your state pension, then that was fine.

However, if you've got private pensions or you work and you've got extra income in addition to that £ 13, 000, then you will be paying tax on that. It won't be a complete gone. It will be a tax reduction. So the tax reduction is withdrawn by £ 1 for every £ 3 of additional income.

So people with a little bit of private income will receive a little bit of protection, but not as much as those people who maybe have income of less than £ 13, 000. So... It is that little bit extra, the £ 500, but it will start being drawn down as you earn £ 3 in additional income for £ 1 that will be every withdrawn down. So that's a benefit for our pensioners, which is nice.

It would be extremely unfair and morally wrong to give somebody a state pension and say, by the way, can I have some of it back? I don't see how they would have even contemplated doing that. So that's not an ideal scenario, is it? Cars, if anybody's got a car right now and has gone to a petrol station, it costs a fortune to fill it up, doesn't it?

Well, the fuel duty has been frozen again until the 1st of July 2027. So the 5p duty discount will also continue until July 2027. And it was originally induced in 2022, actually, and it's been frozen ever since, even though If you go to a petrol station, I can't see it ever being frozen because all I ever see is my petrol bill going up and up and up. So trading allowance, what actually is trading allowance?

Now, trading allowance is an allowance that allows people to go out, try new hobbies, generate a source of income from doing something else, maybe even trading on Vinted, eBay and places like that. Now, if you sell your own products, obviously that's selling your own secondhand goods, that's fine. But if you were to go out to charity shops, car boot sales or other places, buy stuff to then resell, then you're actually trading. And you are entitled to no more than £ 1, 000 of income before you had to do a self-assessment tax return and declare that to HMRC.

Well, that limit from April 2027 is going to be trebled actually. So that is now going to actually go up to £ 3, 000. So the new trading allowance will actually be £ 3, 000. And this will mean that if you've got an additional income of £ 3, 000, however that may be generated, and no matter what your tax band is, you don't have to include that on a tax return.

You don't have to put that onto your tax return going forward. You don't have to do a tax return for that additional £ 3, 000. And I think that's really good because it allows people to generate additional income, try out different new hobby businesses, see if there's things they like, different things like that, really. And I think that could be really good and a great source of people generating additional income for themselves.

So that's an increase to £ 3, 000, but it's an increase of £ 2, 000 from £ 1, 000 to £ 3, 000. And that's from April 2027. Now, finally, the last couple of things that were introduced is probably this one probably affect everybody. And this everybody who has gas in their house, shall we say.

And this is a standard charge on your gas bill. So the standard charge on the gas bill will be abolished in 2027. When in 2027, we don't really know. I suppose it's got to be agreed with the government.

companies how they're going to do it. And are they going to increase the, not the standing charge, but the unit charge in order to compensate for the standing charge? So the standing charge is going to be abolished from April, from 2027, not April, please note that, sometime in 2027. That's an average cost saving per the government of £ 108.

But what we don't really know is how is the gas companies going to generate that back? Because that's for them is extra, it's money, isn't it? So they need to consider how they're going to generate that back. Hopefully they don't just chuck it straight on us on our unit price, which means we end up paying more.

But it's something that they may want to generate back. And the final thing is the winter energy support. So the government has said that those people in council tax bands A to D, inclusive, will receive £ 100 winter energy support. Now, I've heard huge stuff all over the news on all of this stuff.

And it's really quite interesting because some people rent properties where the council tax is included in their bills and therefore they won't get this money and this money will go to the landlord. Will this landlord pass it back to them? I don't really know. Some people are saying, I'm in council, but actually I don't need the money.

What am I going to do? Why am I getting this £ 100? I don't actually want it. Well, I mean, if that is you, then please find a way of giving that money to somebody who does need it.

There's definitely lots of other people out there who do need that £ 100. Maybe find a way to give it to those sorts of people. But you have got your winter... energy support and that is in bands A to D.

It's probably going to pay to you sometime in January is what they have said. How is it going to be paid to you? Well, if you pay your council tax by direct debit and the money comes directly out to your bank account, then the council have your bank details and they will pay that £ 100 back into your bank account for you. However, if you don't pay it by direct debit, you might go to a bank or post office to pay your council tax.

You will need to apply for that £ 100. And there might be some information on how to apply for that coming out soon. But you will need to apply for that £ 100 in order to get that. And that's for people in council tax bands A to D.

So if you're not in those bands, then obviously you're not going to get that. Now, that is basically it. So as you can tell, it wasn't a majorly interesting budget. For me, it was probably one of the standard boring budgets.

No major surprises there. And I was super excited when he talked about founders relief, as you could tell when I was speaking about it earlier. And then completely put down when I realised actually he's not talking about me, any of my clients or any probably the majority of people that might become my clients in the future. So, yeah, so it's not an ideal one, that one.

But you hopefully are going to benefit somewhere along the line from the budget. And hopefully you'll be able to see some benefit to you going forwards. Even if it is just the £ 3, 000 that you can try out a new hobby business or something. So that's it from me this week.

I'm Chantal. If you want to catch us, you can catch Your Business Hour on Instagram and on Facebook. And you can catch all your podcasts, Your Business Hour, wherever you get your podcasts from. I'm Chantal Baker.

I'm also the founder and director and accountant and tax consultant. My business is Champ Consultants. You can check me out on Instagram. You can check Chantal Baker out on Instagram.

You can check Champ Consultants out on our website. And if you actually want to follow me, you can follow me on TikTok where I do share lots of various tax tips as well. So please do give me a follow on TikTok You're more than welcome. You can find me on TikTok.

And if you look for Top Tax Tips UK, Chantal Tax Advisor, then that is me. I've got a lot of spam accounts that try and implicate, pretend they're me, but they're not me. I am the real one. So I will be doing some TikToks this weekend on the budget in a bit more detail on each different topic.

But if you've got any questions and you want to ask me, then you can message us your business hour on Instagram and on Facebook. That's it from me this week. Wishing you an amazing weekend and catch up with you soon. Thank you very much.

Champ Consultants is an award-winning independent firm of highly experienced, qualified accountants and tax advisors based in Caterham, providing a fully comprehensive range of accountancy and tax services. If you would like simple but creative answers to your tax problems, call Champ Consultants, your business partner, on 01883 349 300.