Dear Mr Hunt

It can feel a bit like mission impossible at times running a business in the UK, but this missive isn't directed at Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible! More like our current chancellor, Jeremy Hunt.

I certainly know it can be very challenging at times and from supporting clients over the past 20 years in Malone Accounting, I think we can say that the past 3 or so years since the Covid pandemic and the cost of living crisis has been a regular roller coaster of constant change and obstacles in our way.

With the budget happening next week we can of course expect a few rabbits out of hats, particularly with an election looming! But consider this a kind of wish list of things I'd like to see (but probably won't):

1. An increase in the personal allowance - it feels like forever I've been saying to clients - "your tax free allowance" is ￡12,570! But since the decision was made to freeze the personal allowances in 2021 and the basic rate of tax held at ￡50,270, it's estimated that those policies of doing absolutely nothing have brought in an extra ￡47 billion! Yes let that sink in, doing absolutely no changes or tweaking to these rates has been great for plugging the UK budget deficit, but would it do much harm by allowing us a small increase in the personal allowance ? Even psychologically an increase for inflation which has skyrocketed in the past few years, would mean something and make you think you are able to keep a bit more of your income tax free. In addition more & more people are drawn into the higher rate of tax, purely caused by inflation. To me this status quo of no adjustments for inflation needs to stop and so over to you Mr Hunt next week! https://ifs.org.uk/publications/deepening-freeze-more-adults-ever-are-paying-higher-rate-tax
2. Scrap the child benefit clause for anyone earning more than ￡50k - again this is to me a particularly unfair tax rule where one person in a family can be earning ￡100k a year the other zero and they lose their child benefit whilst another couple could be on ￡50k each a year and they can keep their child benefit. Tax is never really "fair" but surely that is an egregious oversight and has been for many years since it was brought in! Time to reform it or scrap it altogether!
3. Invest in HMRC - this one perhaps isn't a budget headline grabber but being on the frontline and dealing with these things day in day out, you come to realise that HMRC doesn't have the resources to cope with the demands. Case in point we recently received a letter 2 years later than when we had asked for a form to be verified! A new record for our firm and speak to any accountant across the UK and they'll say the same. Surely investing more in HMRC, having more helpline staff & more agents to deal with the queries or what Revenue.ie has in place a great "my enquiries " feature would increase productivity not just for accountants but the many businesses they are helping support. I read an article just yesterday about services levels being at an all time low - https://www.accountancydaily.co/hmrc-service-standards-hit-all-time-lowDon't get started on PAYE coding notices either....

There you go a pretty simple enough wish list, not asking for the moon & stars here but it's your mission Mr Hunt, if you choose to accept it or not!

Let me know what you'd like to see happen next week in the comments.