BUSINESS HOPES DISAPPOINTED.

PositionBusiness and British budget - Brief Article

BUDGET

Britain's accountancy firms have dismissed Chancellor Gordon Brown's pre-election Budget as "failing to excite" and doing little for small or big business. "With a large number of small measures, it was clearly a pre-election Budget," said a tax expert at Chantrey Vellacott DFK. Deloitte and Touche agreed that it "tinkered around the edges".

Paul Eagland, tax partner at BDO Stoy Hayward, said that Brown had not gone far enough to improve tax incentives for business. "He avoided addressing the issue of national insurance contributions on certain unapproved share option schemes, and has missed an opportunity to relax the definition of a trading company for taper relief purposes," he said.

Lindsay Dodsworth, tax partner at Ernst &Young, warned that proposals to allow small companies to pay tax on the basis of their accounting profit would backfire. "It will take a significant cultural change for the Revenue to...

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