We might have expected George Osborne to throw everything but the kitchen sink at today. Instead, he provided us with a fully funded budget, and didn’t spend the money on cheap giveaways. How very grown up of him – but he’s kept plenty of wriggle room to offer some stunning manifesto pledges on IHT.

At current interest rates cash ISAs were fairly pointless before, but now are likely to be unnecessary for the vast majority of savers. The new 1,000 tax allowance for savers means you’d need to have cash savings of more than 100,000 at one per cent interest to need to shelter any of it from the taxman in an ISA.

The Chancellor’s announcement on deeds of variation leaves us with uncertainty – but we’d assume that the trade-off will be the much-anticipated 1m IHT relief offer in the Tory manifesto.

Moving on from the JISA and the NISA, the Help to Buy-ISA joins the family of increasingly complex tax shelters. However, receiving government support to build up a 15,000 deposit will be a welcome boost to many prospective first time buyers in the area.

Our plea to stop tinkering with pensions – please stop before everyone stops saving – was not heeded with another reduction in the lifetime allowance to 1m. This sounds like a really substantial pension but after taking 25% tax free cash – this pot could only buy an indexed linked joint life pension of 26,000 a year.

Tim Walker
Divisional Director – Head of Office

Brewin Dolphin
Direct line 01392 440458
E-mail: Tim.Walker@Brewin.co.uk

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