With the dust having settled after last month’s Budget, what seems to be preoccupying our clients? Certain topics crop up again and again including the following:

Pensions

– the headline grabbing changes to pensions have certainly prompted a number of questions. With Labour’s indication that they would undo these changes if they came to power, the most frustrating aspect is the uncertainty. How would the measure be unwound? With retrospective effect? With a cliff edge? Given the lack of clarity, the best course of action seems to be to proceed with caution which is not the easiest message to deliver.

Charities

– one of the seemingly small changes (curtailing the geographical scope of the definition of charities to the UK only) has had an impact for clients intending to benefit non-UK charities whilst securing an inheritance tax relief. One wonders what other knock-on effects this change might have in the rest of the tax code where the charity definition is imported.

International clients

– there was, perhaps unsurprisingly, nothing about changes to the non-dom tax regime. Labour have already announced that, if they come to power, they will scrap the non-dom tax rules entirely. Whilst some may believe the stance has political advantages, for internationally mobile clients it is unsettling. Recent conversations with clients have started to focus on the steps to be taken to make leaving the UK in short order as smooth a process as possible. If this exodus materialises, this will have a major impact on the UK economy and wealth generation. Together with the Conservatives’ recent abolition of the Tier 1 Investor Visa (the route by which many wealthy non-doms came to the UK in the first place, especially post-Brexit), it seems strange that the UK’s leading parties are making it so much less attractive for these individuals to make the UK their home, just at a time when other European countries (notably Italy) are introducing rules to attract wealth and grow their economies.