Osborne aims to make extra £1bn from tax clampdown
GEORGE Osborne will use tomorrow’s GEORGE Osborne will use tomorrow’s Budget to clamp down on tax avoidance, announcing a raft of measures that he hopes will net the exchequer £4bn.
The chancellor first unveiled many of the proposals in December, including plans to close certain VAT and foreign exchange loopholes. At the time, the Treasury said the measures would raise around £500m a year or £2bn over the course of the parliament. But tomorrow Osborne will say he hopes to raise twice that amount by closing down a number of other loopholes to net an extra £1bn over four years.
And City A.M. understands the Office for Budget Responsibility will revise up its estimate of how much the measures announced in December will generate by £1bn.
Osborne will clamp down on Employer Financed Retirement Benefit Schemes (EFRBs) – a kind of off-shore pensions trust that is not subject to the same taxes as registered schemes – by taxing contributions at 50 per cent.
Meanwhile, the chancellor will announce that private and corporate jets will be subject to Air Passenger Duty for the first time.