Please see below a summary of the main announcements. For the official government summary, please click here.
Furlough scheme
- Extended until the end of September 2021
- Government will pay 80% of employees' wages for hours they cannot work
- Employers contribution to start from July. Contribution will be 10% in July and 20% in August and September
Changes for individuals and self-employed
- Tax-free personal allowance frozen at £12,570 from April 2021 to April 2026
- Higher rate income tax threshold frozen at £50,270 from April 2021 to April 2026
- £20 weekly uplift in Universal Credit extended for another six months
- Working Tax Credit claimants will get £500 one-off payment
- Minimum wage to increase to £8.91 an hour from April 2021
- No changes to rates of income tax, national insurance or VAT
- Support for the self-employed also to be extended until September 2021
- 600,000 more self-employed people will be eligible for help as access to grants is widened
- Stamp duty holiday on house purchases in England and Northern Ireland extended to 30 June 2021. No tax charged on sales of less than £500,000. The starting rate of stamp duty will be £250,000 until the end of September 2021. Stamp duty will then return to the usual level of £125,000.
- Inheritance tax thresholds, pensions lifetime allowances and annual capital gains tax exemptions frozen at 2020-2021 levels until 2025-2026.
Corporation tax and businesses
- Corporation tax on company profits above £250,000 will rise to 25% in April 2023
- Smaller companies with profits of less than £50,000 rate to remain at 19%
- Incentives for firms to take on apprentices to rise to £3,000
- VAT rate for hospitality firms to be maintained at 5% rate until September 2021; an interim 12.5% rate will then apply for the following six months
- Business rates holiday for firms in England to continue until June with 66% discount after that
Allocation to existing programs
- £1.65bn to support the UK's vaccination rollout and £50m to boost the UK's vaccine testing capability
- £19m for domestic violence programmes, funding network of respite rooms for homeless women
- £40m of new funding for victims of 1960s Thalidomide scandal and lifetime support guarantee
- £10m to support armed forces veterans with mental health needs
- £400m to help arts venues in England, including museums and galleries, re-open
- £300m recovery package for professional sport and £25m for grassroots football
- £1.2m to help stage delayed Women's Euros football tournament in England in 2022
- £1.2bn in funding for the Scottish government, £740m for the Welsh government and £410m for the Northern Ireland executive
Restarting the economy
- £5bn in Restart grants for shops and other businesses in England forced to close
- £6,000 per premises for non-essential outlets due to re-open in April and £18,000 for gyms, personal care providers and other hospitality and leisure businesses
- Tax breaks for firms to "unlock" £20bn worth of business investment
- Firms will be able "deduct" investment costs from tax bills, reducing taxable profits by 130%
- £150m for community groups to take over pubs at risk of closure
Other changes
- New visa scheme to help start-ups and rapidly growing tech firms source talent from overseas
- Contactless payment limit will rise to £100 later in 2021
- No change in fuel duty
New initiatives
- New UK Infrastructure Bank to be set up in Leeds with £12bn in capital, with aim of funding £40bn worth of public and private projects
- £15bn in green bonds, including for retail investors, to help finance the transition to net zero by 2050
- 750 UK civil servants to be relocated to new Treasury campus in Darlington
- £1bn fund to promote regeneration in a further 45 English towns, including Middlesbrough, Preston, Swindon, Bournemouth, Newark, West Bromwich and Ipswich
- First eight sites announced for freeports in England: East Midlands Airport, Felixstowe and Harwich, Humber, Liverpool City Region, Plymouth, Solent, Thames and Teesside
