Nothing from the Chancellor to sweeten bitter pill of the Corporation Tax rise

Large research-focused companies are among the winners from the Autumn Statement but overall recent tax changes have been negative for growth-minded businesses. 

From the perspective of growth-minded business the Autumn Statement was a mixed-bag. The lack of any other major corporation tax announcements will have been a welcome relief for businesses, who are still reeling from successive fiscal statements this year which have seen the main Corporation Tax rate - as well as the Annual Investment Allowance for capital expenditure - going up and down like a yo-yo.  

There will however be disappointment from businesses that there were no new announcements on capital allowances to replace the generous outgoing ‘super-deduction’ scheme and to sweeten the bitter pill of a 25% Corporation Tax rate, which is now only fractionally lower than in other G7 countries like USA, France and Canada. 

Changes to R&D tax relief regimes saw with a reduced rate of relief for the SME scheme but an increased rate for the large company ‘RDEC’ scheme. This is bad news for smaller companies engaged in R&D but will be positively received by large research-focused companies. 

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