Autumn Finance Bill 2023 published

The Government has published its draft 2023/24 Finance Bill, following the Autumn Statement on 22 November 2023, which will eventually be enacted as Finance Act 2024.

Download our Autumn Statement summary (pdf)
Download our 2024/25 Tax Tables (pdf)

The Finance Bill reflects announcements made in the Autumn Statement, including making full expensing for corporation tax purposes permanent.

See our previous article: Full Expensing: the new capital allowance

Permanent full expensing, the successor to the super deduction, allows companies to deduct 100% of the cost of a wide range of plant and machinery – such as lorries, drills and office chairs - from their profits before tax.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced other measures in his Autumn Statement which are featured in the Bill, including:

Merger into one scheme of the current R&D Expenditure Credit and SME schemes.
More generous support for loss-making R&D intensive SMEs as announced in the spring Budget.
Extending the sunset clause for the Enterprise Investment Scheme and the Venture Capital Trust scheme to 6 April 2035.
For the creative sector, reforming the film, TV and video games tax reliefs to refundable expenditure credits.
Expanding the ‘cash basis’ – a simplified way for smaller, growing traders to use a simpler method of calculating their profits for income tax purposes.

The majority of tax changes in the Bill take effect from April 2024.

The Bill received its first reading in Parliament on 27 November 2023 and will follow the normal passage through Parliament, and received its second reading in the House of Commons on 13 December.

National Insurance

The changes to National Insurance, which will take effect on 6 January 2024 for employees and 6 April for self-employed people, are being legislated through a separate Bill - The National Insurance Contributions (Reduction in Rates) Bill.

The Bill completed its remaining House of Lords stages on 12 December 2023.