Housing was given scarcely a mention in the Budget - perhaps there was little need to do so, given the government's White Paper came out just a month before the chancellor gave his speech.
In the 106-page document, Fixing our Broken Housing Market, the Department for Communities and Local Government reiterated government pledges to put billions of pounds into boosting housebuilding in the UK.
The document outlined how the government would set about finding the land, building more homes - and quickly - as well as creating a diverse housing market in the UK.
In her prologue to the report, Prime Minister Theresa May said: "I want to fix this broken market so that housing is more affordable and people have the security they need to plan for the future. The starting point is to build more homes.
"This will slow the rise in housing costs so that more ordinary working families can afford to buy a home and it will also bring the cost of renting down."
For self-employed workers it is already a challenge to secure the things that many of us take for granted, such as a mortgage. Keith StreetSo it was therefore no surprise that housing did not get a mention in the Budget speech or much space devoted to housing or property in the accompanying Budget documents (which was one of the shortest documents in the history of recent Budgets).
Stamp Duty
What was mentioned briefly was property taxation - but not stamp duty, which has doggedly remained at the scale below for residential purchases despite the fact it is nigh on impossible to find a property for £125,000 in London and the South East.
Given stamp duty land tax (SDLT) has been forecast by government to bring £17bn into the Exchequer's coffers, this is perhaps understandable.
| Purchase price of property | Rate of Stamp Duty | Buy to Let/ Additional Home Rate (from April 2016) * |
| £0 - £125,000 | 0% | 3% |
| £125,001 - £250,000 | 2% | 5% |
| £250,001 - £925,000 | 5% | 8% |
| £925,001 - £1.5m | 10% | 13% |
The buy-to-let market was also watching to see if the chancellor might let up on private landlords, but anyone hoping that Philip Hammond would relent and give the buy-to-let market a tax reprieve was also going to be disappointed.
Instead, Mr Hammond's silence on the matter indicated he was happy for George Osborne's crackdown on buy-to-let investors to remain in place.
In April 2016, the first of the chancellor's measures kicked in when the 3 per cent SDLT came into force.
As a result, many landlords moved to create limited company structures - special purpose vehicles (SPVs) - to mitigate the effect of the 3 per cent tax hike.
However, in a policy statement supporting the 2016 Budget, the then chancellor Mr Osborne confirmed those buying inside a limited company will still be hit by the surcharge - so both corporate and individual residential property purchases will be subject to the 3 per cent hike.
To add insult to injury, in this Spring Budget, Mr Hammond announced a dividend tax allowance cut from £5,000 to £2,000.
This £3,000 allowance reduction has rubbed salt into the wound of buy-to-let investors, who can take income from the SPV either as dividends or as a salary - both of which have tax implications.
David Hollingworth, associate director, communications at London & Country Mortgages, comments: "Landlords using SPVs will find themselves affected by the dividend allowance cut.
"Dividends are one way of extracting income from the company but the dividend payment will now come with even lower tax breaks.
"There is no good news there for landlords who have used a company structure to protect themselves."
That said, the Budget did pledge to "delay the reduction in the filing and payment window" until 2018-19 - giving some measure of reprieve.
Self-employed
As if it had not become harder for entrepreneurs and the self-employed to get a mortgage, thanks to tough affordability criteria and the need from some lenders for three years' worth of proof of earnings, the additional tax burden proposed by the chancellor could make it harder for them to get on the housing ladder.
There are already questions about how well the mortgage market caters towards self-employed mortgage applicants. David HollingworthIn the first instance, the dividend tax hike makes tax planning more difficult, as Tina Riches, national tax partner at Smith & Williamson, comments: "A basic rate taxpayer with at least £5,000 of dividend income will see a £225 increase in their tax bill from April 2019; a higher rate taxpayer, £973.
"This may mean more people will be required to complete self-assessment tax returns if their dividend income exceeds £2,000 and will affect investors as well as the self-employed.
"There may be further changes to closer align the taxation of employees and self-employed with a report due in the summer."
Thankfully - for those who lobbied hard against it - the hike in Class 4 national insurance contributions (NICs) has been abolished, in an unusual U-turn from the government on 15 March.
In his Budget, Mr Hammond announced the government intended to abolish Class 2 NICs as it was "regressive and outdated". This will still go ahead.
However, hand-in-hand with that was the announcement to increase the main rate of Class 4 NICS for the self-employed, from 9 per cent to 10 per cent, with a further 1 per cent hike in April 2019.
This would have raised a net £145m for the UK's public services by 2021-2022, an average of 60p a week per each self-employed person in the UK - equating to £31.20 per self-employed person a year additional tax paid.
This has now been repealed, but the self-employed are not out of the woods yet; they still face strict mortgage criteria and an onerous burden of proof to supply many banks with two or three years' worth of earnings before they can secure a decent loan rate.
Mr Hollingworth says: "One has to consider the fact there are already questions about how well the mortgage market caters towards self-employed mortgage applicants."
Keith Street, vice-chairman of group lending for The Northview Group, says: "For self-employed workers it is already a challenge to secure the things that many of us take for granted, such as a mortgage, and the Budget news will affect their ability to meet affordability criteria."
He said it would be incumbent on such clients and their advisers to "seek out deals" and "find a great value for money deal".
Property taxation
As mentioned earlier, property taxation was outlined in the Budget documents (section 4.7). The chancellor announced it would set out its approach for delivering more frequent revaluations of properties in the Autumn Budget this year.
The government will also consult ahead of the next revaluation in 2022.
Further, the government is set to amend legislation to ensure all profits realised by offshore property developers developing land in the UK - including those on pre-existing contracts - are subject to tax, with effect from 8 March 2017.
The government is also set to consult on proposals to redesign rent-a-room relief, to ensure it is better targeted to support longer-term lettings.
simoney.kyriakou@ft.com
