Budget 2011 - Growth
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Issued 23 March 2011
The Government’s economic policy objective is to achieve
strong, sustainable and balanced growth that is more evenly shared
across the country and between industries.
This requires the economy to be rebalanced towards exports
and private sector investment.
The Government has already taken action to reduce the deficit
and provide a stable economic environment – which is essential for
sustainable growth – and to drive private sector led-growth.
The Budget builds on this with a package of measures that
support private sector investment, enterprise and innovation:
- a reduction in the main rate of corporation tax by a
further one per cent. From April 2011, the rate will be reduced to 26
per cent with further yearly reductions of one per cent until 2014 when
it will reach 23 per cent;
- new Controlled Foreign Company rules to allow groups based
in the UK to compete more effectively with those based overseas;
- the abolition of 43 tax reliefs whose rationale is no
longer valid – following recommendations from the Office of Tax
Simplification;
- dropping existing proposals for specific regulations which
would have cost business over £350m a year;
- £100m for local authorities to repair potholes caused by
the cold winter weather;
- increase the rate of R&D tax credits for small and
medium-sized enterprises from 175 per cent to 225 per cent by April
2012;
- a new presumption in favour of sustainable development, so
that the default answer to development is ‘yes’; and
- 21 new Enterprise Zones, to focus growth in specific parts
of the UK.
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