Spring Statement 2025

• The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, delivered her Spring Statement today (26 March 2025) in the House of Commons

• The full Spring Statement publication can be seen here and all other associated publications can be seen here

Announcements include;

• Investment in HMRC’s capacity to crack down on tax avoidance, promoters of tax avoidance schemes and prosecuting more tax fraudsters. Two consultations have been published, ‘Closing in on promoters of tax avoidance’ and ‘Enhancing HMRC's ability to tackle tax advisers facilitating non-compliance’

• Over the next five years £100m will be invested to recruit an additional 500 HMRC compliance staff

• Late payment penalties will be increased for VAT taxpayers and Income Tax Self Assessment taxpayers as they join Making Tax Digital (“MTD”) from 2025 onwards. The new rates will be 3% of the tax outstanding where tax is overdue by 15 days, plus 3% where tax is overdue by 30 days, plus 10% per annum where tax is overdue by 31 days or more

• Expansion of the rollout of MTD for Income Tax Self Assessment to sole traders and landlords with incomes over £20,000 from April 2028. See the consultation here

• Modernising the tax system through Making Tax Digital’

• A consultation ‘Behavioural penalties reform’ has been published to explore options to simplify the calculation of penalties to act as a stronger deterrent to those deliberately avoiding paying what they owe

• Interestingly, the Chancellor announced the training of up to 60,000 construction workers by 2029 to deliver 1.5 million homes by the end of this Parliament (2029). As we know, there is set to be a huge shake up in the temporary labour industry in 2026 and historically, we know the construction sector rely on agencies and umbrella companies to engage the temporary labour…