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Thursday 19 March 2015

Budget 2015: Personal finances

Chancellor George Osborne described his final budget as one that would see Britain leaving behind the "chaos of the past" and "walking tall again."
Here's our summary of the key measures aimed at personal finances:
Minimum Wage
  • the rate will rise to £6.70 this autumn
  • people on minimum wage will be paid £8 an hour by 2020.
Pensions
  • from next year, the lifetime allowance will drop from £1.25 million to £1 million
  • the lifetime allowance will be indexed to protect pension pots from inflation from 2018
  • pensioners will be able to access the money held in their annuities 
  • the 55% tax charge on accessing annuities will be abolished next year and replaced with tax at the marginal rate. 
Married couple's allowance
  • the transferable tax allowance for married couples to rise to £1,100 from April 2015.
Income tax
  • the personal income tax allowance will be raised to £10,600 for 2015/16
  • it will rise to £10,800 in 2016/17 and £11,000 in 2017/18
  • the threshold for the higher rate of income tax will increase from £42,385 this year to £43,300 by 2017/18. 
ISAs
  • more flexible ISAs will allow people to remove money and return it back in the same year without losing their tax-free entitlement
  • Help to Buy ISAs will help first time buyers get on the property ladder
  • for every £200 savers deposit in a Help to Buy ISA, the government top it up by 25% (£50) up to a limit of £12,000.
Personal savings
  • from April 2016, the first £1,000 of the interest earned on savings will be tax-free
  • the allowance for higher rate taxpayers will be set at £500.

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