{"id":6572,"date":"2024-03-07T09:28:45","date_gmt":"2024-03-07T09:28:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/?p=6572"},"modified":"2024-03-07T09:28:45","modified_gmt":"2024-03-07T09:28:45","slug":"hunts-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/hunts-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunt’s Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Thought for Thursday<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\u201cDo not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving\u201d. \u2013 Warren Buffett<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Hunt\u2019s Budget<\/h2>\n <\/div>\n
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Such was the level of information leaked prior to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt\u2019s Budget yesterday, few surprises were thrown at the dispatch box. Headlines this morning are centring on the how the British workforce have been handed a \u00a310bn a year tax break with Hunt\u2019s decision to cut National Insurance Contributions by 2p at the forefront of this. For employees this will reduce the tax from 10% to 8%, and for the self-employed will cut it from 8% to 6%.<\/p>\n

According to some sources, Hunt\u2019s speech yesterday alluded to the possibility of further cuts to National Insurance Contributions. For example, the Telegraph writes that Hunt \u201csignals end of National Insurance\u201d which is now the \u201ccentrepiece of the conservative re-election bid\u201d. According to a range of opinion polls, as of 4\u00a0March the Conservatives remain some 20pts behind Labour.<\/p>\n

The measures, according to Hunt\u00a0equate to an annual tax-break of \u00a3450 for those on an average salary. Meanwhile, according to The Office for Budget Responsibility the\u00a0measures are expected to put an extra 200,000 people in work and increase GDP per capita by 0.4%.<\/p>\n

Helping to fund some of the tax break is the decision to abolish the Non-Dom Status and replace it with a new \u2018modern residency\u2019 scheme which Hunt says will raise \u00a32.7bn per annum. According to the IFS there are presently 37,000 people currently claiming non-dom tax status.<\/p>\n

Other measures include the continuation of a freeze on fuel duty for another year (which would otherwise have ended in March) and the continuation of a freeze on alcohol duty to February 2025 (which would otherwise have ended in March).<\/p>\n

The VAT registration threshold will also be raised from \u00a385k to \u00a390k from 1 April while the higher rate of capital gains tax on residential property was reduced four percentage points from 28% to 24%. The Treasury\u2019s windfall tax on oil and gas profits will also be extended to 2029 and Hunt will lay out plans for a British ISA.<\/p>\n

According to Hunt, the plans laid out yesterday will help to bring debt to below 94% by 2028\/2029, though with a General Election looming, the end of the decade no doubt feels like a long way away for those in No.11.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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ECB Monetary Policy Meeting<\/strong><\/p>\n

At 1315 this afternoon, attention will turn to the ECB\u2019s monetary policy meeting. Here, the market is expecting the central bank to hold rates for the fourth consecutive time which would keep their main refinancing operations rate at 4.5%, and their marginal lending facility and deposit facility is at 4.75% and 4%, respectively. The forecasted fourth hold comes on the back end of the ECB latest tightening cycle which involved 10-consecutive rate hikes from July 2022,<\/p>\n

With the main refinancing rate at a 22-year high and headline inflation easing to 2.6% across the eurozone, market attention continues to be centred on the ECB\u2019s future monetary pathway and the extent to which the central bank will cut rates over the coming quarters. The ECB continue to tread a precarious tightrope however with doves considering poor growth from the power houses of France and Germany, while hawks continue to weigh up the elevated level of core inflation which currently stands at 3.9%.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n

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Hottest February on Record<\/strong><\/p>\n

Research from the EU’s climate service has shown that February 2024 was globally the warmest on record while global sea surface temperatures were also at record highs. Here, the Copernicus Climate Change Service identified that February was \u201c1.77\u00b0C warmer than an estimate of the February average for 1850-1900, the designated pre-industrial reference period.\u201d Following months of records being broken,\u00a0between March 2023 and February 2024, global warming reached 1.56C above the pre-industrial average.<\/p>\n

This comes against the target laid out during the Paris COP21 conference in 2015 which saw leaders around the world pledge to keep global warming within a 1.5C threshold of preindustrial levels.<\/p>\n

The survey also identified that the Arctic sea ice extent was 2% below average and Antarctic sea ice was 28% below average over the February 2024 period. This comes as the average global sea surface temperature was registered as being the highest for any monthly period with a new absolute high also being set at over 21\u00b0C.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thought for Thursday, few surprises from Hunt’s budget yesterday, this afternoon’s monetary policy meeting at the ECB, and global high temperature records in February.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":2078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"rp-language":[16],"class_list":["post-6572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-morning-updates","rp-language-en_gb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6572"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6579,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6572\/revisions\/6579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6572"},{"taxonomy":"rp-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rp-language?post=6572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}