Advisers' Budget wish-list - what's on yours?

As a mortgage broker my wish list is a housing one, so I'll leave pensions and tax wrappers to the wealth advisers. First, a proper successor to Help to Buy for first-time buyers, aimed at the monthly payment, tightly targeted at those who genuinely can't get there, and under a new name, because the old one carries too much baggage. Second, real leasehold reform: cap ground rents and service charges and hold managing agents to account. That would unlock a huge number of stalled flat sales without building a single home. Third, and most of all, certainty. The worst thing for the market is floating a big property tax change and then reversing it, because transactions freeze while everyone waits to see what lands. A fresh government has a real chance to set a stable tone, and stability would do more for buyers, sellers and the firms serving them than any one giveaway. Get the confidence to transact back, and a lot follows from there.

If nothing else, the Government should stop tinkering, particularly with pensions and ISAs. Constant rule changes make long-term financial planning harder and risk undermining confidence in products people are expected to use for decades.

I have little hope they will reverse the decision to bring pensions into the inheritance tax net, but they could still scrap the planned £2,000 limit on the National Insurance advantages of pension salary sacrifice.

I would also reverse the proposed ISA changes, including the lower Cash ISA limit and the 22% charge on interest earned on cash held within Stocks & Shares ISAs. At a time when we need people to save and invest more, adding complexity and making established savings vehicles less attractive feels entirely counterproductive.

What advisers and clients need most is stability, simplicity and confidence that the rules will not keep changing.

This budget is a scary one, because everything seems up in the air. Who knows what Burnham will do? For me, he needs to focus on ways to boost certain industries which will in turn boost the wider economy. For example; The property market is painfully quiet and anything they can do to revitalise this would be welcome. A stamp duty holiday or Help To Buy scheme would get things jumping sufficiently. Away from finance, Hospitality has been crying out for a VAT cut for years, the rest of Europe enjoy 7-10% vat while the uk industry get clobbered. These sort of changes, help businesses, improve the wider economy and put pennies back in the publics pocket. The government need to start giving money back to people rather than taking it in tax.

A financial adviser’s Budget wish-list is very different from a politician’s. Clients need rules they can plan around, not another Budget surprise.

Reverse bringing pensions into estates for inheritance tax and unfreeze IHT thresholds. Fiscal drag is pulling more ordinary families into the tax.

Give business owners stability on CGT and Business Asset Disposal Relief. Selling a business can represent 30 years’ work; they need a runway, not a Budget cliff edge.

Then leave pensions alone. Constant tinkering undermines confidence in long-term saving.

Finally, reform stamp duty. It discourages moving and downsizing and slows up the housing market.

The biggest improvement would be boring but valuable - fewer surprises, longer term planning and rules that survive more than one Budget.

My biggest hope is that this is a Budget for growth rather than another exercise in finding new things to tax.

Stability is paramount. We’ve had changes to CGT, inheritance tax, pensions, business reliefs and taxes on savings and dividends, each presented as a one-off. Reversals are probably wishful thinking, but a benign Budget that leaves the regime alone, and signals it will stay that way, would itself be welcome.

Fundamentally, Britain needs a tax system that attracts capital, entrepreneurs and productive wealthy people rather than driving them away. We cannot tax our way to prosperity; we need a larger economy and a broader tax base.

I would also hope more could be done to help young people onto the first rung of the employment ladder: reduce the cost and risk of employing them, expand apprenticeships and reward businesses that provide that crucial first job.

Make Britain a better place to invest, build businesses, employ people and create wealth.

My biggest Budget wish would be to stop treating housing affordability as something that can be fixed with another short-term buyer scheme. The new Help to Buy evaluation found 54% of users said they could have bought without it, which shows why support needs to be better targeted. I’d rather see stamp duty reform that reduces the upfront cost of moving, targeted help for buyers who genuinely need it, and a relentless focus on building more homes. Mortgage rules can help at the margins, but they cannot solve a shortage of suitable housing.