The Gabem Umbrella Companies Blog:
Home of Umbrella Company Gossip Online
25th June 2010: The emergency budget and 20% VAT
The emergency budget has come and gone and as I think we were all expecting it was pretty tight. It did contain a few unexpected steps, who would have thought it would be the tories giving tax breaks to the lower paid and tax increases to the higher paid only for Labour to then complain about it?
The big news was the VAT increase which is impressive even if we all knew it was coming. I would imagine that despite the criticism it's the right move considering how little effect the drop in VAT to 15% had on the Christmas Sales.
Contractors and umbrella companies don't have anything to complain about, as things stand there might even be some opportunities appearing. Some contracting budgets may be tightening a little due to the VAT increase but in the broad scheme of things it will have little impact.
The one thing I would say is that contractors relying on a lot of public sector work should probably look at diversifying and making a bigger deal of the private sector jobs they've done on their CV.
Overall despite the belt tightening it left me feeling fairly positive about the future, and we'll know if it worked in about 4 years.
Hugo
@GabemUmbrella
25/06/2010
