He announced changes to taxation, tax avoidance, small businesse taxation, pensions and childcare.
- The largest tax cut in the Budget was a cut in Employer's National Insurance, which will be worth up to £2,000 per employer from 2014. He said this would particularly help 450,000 small businesses who may not need to pay any National Insurance and would boost jobs growth.
- The income tax personal allowance will be increased to £10,000 next year, a year earlier than planned. This means that from 2014 employees will pay no income tax at all on their first £10,000 of earnings. Some 3m of the lowest-paid workers will pay no income tax at all. Mr Osborne described this as a "historic achievement".
- Corporation tax will be reduced to 21 per cent next year and by a further one per cent to 20 per cent in 2015. Mr Osborne cited this as the "lowest business tax of any major economy in the world".
- Tax avoidance was also mentioned with Mr Osborne announcing tax agreements with Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man. He also announced plans to "name and shame" those who were promoters of aggressive tax avoidance schemes. Mr Osborne said: "This government is not going to let you get away with it." This would be helped by the launch of a general anti-abuse rule.
- The flat-rate State Pension would be introduced in 2016, one year earlier than expected, providing £144 per week for all pensioners. For pensioners requiring care, the long-term care cap has also been brought forward to 2016 and will protect savings above £72,000.
- Working parents are to be supported by tax-free childcare vouchers which will mean 20 per cent off the first £6,000 of childcare costs.
- There will be help for first-time buyers thanks to a new 'help-to-buy' mortgage scheme which will provide a government loan of up to 20 per cent of a home's value for those starting on the property ladder plus other homebuying help.
- On Seed Enterprise Investment Schemes legislation will be introduced in Finance Bill 2013 to extend the capital gains tax (CGT) relief for reinvesting gains in SEIS shares to gains accruing in 2013-14. When those gains are reinvested during 2013-14 or 2014-15 the relief will apply to half the qualifying re-invested amount.
• Financial Planner Online is covering the Budget extensively today with coverage of the announcements and all the post-Budget reaction from our expert Budget panel. We will be also be tweeting via our feed @FPM_Online.