Tom Selby, head of retirement policy at AJ Bell, says: “The chancellor has chosen to tinker at the edges rather than pursue radical Isa simplification for the benefit of savers and investors.
"It is ridiculous Brits are faced with a choice of six types of Isa when deciding where to invest for the future, with different rules and allowances further clouding the picture."
He says complexity and a lack of understanding remains one of the biggest barriers to investing and that the chancellor has missed "an opportunity to tackle this complexity head-on".
"Allowing people to pay money into more than one Isa of each type in a tax year is a sensible move, making it easier for investors to try out different stocks and shares Isa providers, while cash savers could open multiple new Isas as new deals become available.
"However, this is hardly an earth-shattering change in its own right. It should instead have been the foundation upon which more fundamental simplification was built."
Sunset clause
Finally, the government has finally extended the sunset clause for tax-efficient investments, such as venture capital trusts and enterprise investment schemes, to April 2035.
The sunset clause, which was created as part of EU state aid rules, meant VCT relief was only available to subscribers for shares issued before April 6 2025.
Hunt's predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng had announced plans to extend this period in his "mini"-Budget in late 2022 and today plans to do so were finally made concrete.
Jason Hollands, managing director of investment platform Bestinvest, welcomes the move but says more could have been done to make the investments more attractive to investors.
"The sunset clause was required under EU state aid directives and so one option could have been to make these schemes permanent as a demonstrable example of the greater flexibility the UK now has outside of the EU regulatory orbit.
"But an extension by a decade nevertheless provides both businesses and VCT and EIS fund managers with clarity that the schemes remain a valued part of the financial ecosystem."
The annual amount that can be subscribed to VCT share issues and benefit from income tax credits has been held at £200,000 since 2004-05. This could have been raised, says Hollands.
An even bolder move, he says, would have been to increase the income tax credits for investing in VCT new shares from 30 per cent to 40 per cent.
"Increasing it could have provided a very rapid boost to the financing of small, UK-growth companies, especially from high earners who still have very limited access to pension tax reliefs because of tapering,” he says.
