This short piece has little enough to do with the UK’s recent budget per-se, it’s more of an observation.
Essentially, thousands of people across the UK rushed through the sale of properties before the budget because rumours abounded that the Capital Gains Tax rate (for the un-initiated – tax paid on that portion of the sale that is profit since the the property was purchased or inherited, allowing for inflation and various allowances) was to soar from 18% to anything up to 50%.
In effect, the 18% rate remained in place for a large number of people (those on basic rate tax) and was only hiked to 28% for everybody else – a rise granted, but nothing like the predicted rate.
The moral of the story is, I guess, that governments are past masters at leaking so called ‘details’ of huge cuts/taxes via preferred media sources, so that when lesser cuts are introduced they don’t appear as draconian – it is a widely used form of misdirection in political circles. Those who sold their properties before the budget to avoid the CGT hike might now be in a situation where they wish they had stayed put until the property market recovered to some extent.
Unfortunately, everything you read in the media isn’t always entirely correct – particularly when predicting what governments are going to do in a budget.
