Jason Hollands, Managing Director of investment and financial planning group Tilney:
“After weeks of speculation around potential stealth taxes to cover the Government’s NHS spending pledge, the Budget saw a slew of new spending committments and a welcome acceleration of plans to raise both the personal allowance and higher rate tax threshold to April 2019. Overall this was a Budget that has outperfomed expectations.
“Pleasingly a mooted raid on pension tax reliefs, did not happen. These have looked like they have been living on borrowed time since the Chancellor’s predecessor, George Osborne, came close to overhauling them in 2016. The current system of pension tax reliefs have proved as resilient as a cat with nine lives. That will undoubtedly be welcomed by many middle class professionals, but with a potential Labour government in the wings no one should take the long-term continuity of such generous reliefs for granted because of today’s stay of execution.”
