Too much kite flying?

Citywire ran a piece this week asking wealth management firms their thoughts about the the Chancellor’s changes to salary sacrifice and the impact of pre-Budget speculation. Chris Wyllie, Our Chief Investment Officer was asked for his point of view.

Chris Wyllie, Connor Broadley, Chief Investment Officer

“In the end the outcome was not as bad as feared. The general thrust of it has been known about for a couple of weeks. I had become just so bored of the kite flying and predictions. I had stopped reading all the reports a while ago.  The general market perspective was if they had done what they had proposed, i.e. hiked income tax, then that would have been a lot more favourable as it was cleaner and people knew what they were getting.

You just introduce a lot more variables with this smorgasbord approach, where you don’t know exactly how much each policy will raise you.

Bond markets, bond yields, clearly rated the policy of hiking income tax.

The markets, as is, have remained pretty settled. I’d expect the Bank of England to go after rate cuts early next year, while bond yields – currently at 4.5% – will close up.”

You can read the full article here: https://citywire.com/new-model-adviser/news/salary-sacrifice-ni-relief-felt-too-good-to-be-true-advisers-on-budget-2025/a2479312