[Closed] The Budget

I predict him really shocking everyone by not dropping the top rate of tax from 50% at all, but instead raising it to 85%, then telling the bankers et al, that if they don't like it they can **** right off!!

Then raise the level of earnings before tax to £12,000. He is then carried aloft through the streets of London by the smiling, whooping, dancing working classes 😀

I predict that a small increase already planned in the taxable threshold for most earners will be hyped to high heaven and more than offset by a top-end giveaway, and that few people will notice or care about it.

construction firms get extra funding to make cheap crap matchstick housing to sell off at exorbitant prices. YAY!

i predict lots of posturing, stern phrases and empty rhetoric

from a chancellor who doesnt really know what to do (not that the opposition seem to know much more)

"construction firms get extra funding to make cheap crap matchstick housing to sell off at exorbitant prices. YAY! "

this - and the fact that people dont know any better .....

I wonder why Vince Cable didn't get a seat? Why is he left standing by the Speaker's Chair?

because he's a minor irritant and utter irrelevance

Why is he left standing by the Speaker's Chair?

I don't think he is an MP is he? hence does not have a 'seat'

Agree binners, but someone told me he was also Business Secretary and an MP for Twickenham. Must be wrong!

I wonder how the seating is decided?

I wonder how the seating is decided?

Paper, Scissors, Stone. Obviously.

Sounds like A level Econ students better read the HMRC and OBR reports on impact of tax changes published today.

So can Ed Milliband now step up to the plate?

I wonder how the seating is decided?

When the music stops ....

teamhurtmore - Member

So can Ed Milliband now step up to the plate?

Ed's tactic is to oppose everything ... 😆

Seems like a pretty balanced budget - 7 or 15% stamp duty on "mansions", 2m taken out of paying tax, reduction in tax paid by people on minimum wage of 50%. Nice to see David (Not Ed! - edit) Millipede already slating the government for pandering to the rich. Maybe he wasn't listening...

teamhurtmore - Member
So can Ed Milliband now step up to the plate?

Who?

[img] [/img]

🙂

Definitely time to pack in smoking. Again.

So stamp duty for land over 2million is up to 7% but the income tax people with the income to afford such land is reduced by 10%.

What's with Ed always mentioning " ... same old Tories ..."?

Has he no new thing to say? Can't he be a bit more creative?

VAT on sport nutrition drinks. WHAT?

So these have gone up in price more than fags.

You couldn't make it up.

Looks like we'll be paying 20% more for sports nutrition drinks such as SIS and Hi Five etc as they now attract vat. Get your orders in now.
Edit: Too slow again!

Sock it to him Ed! You're a tiger! Ggggrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

[img] [/img]

construction firms get extra funding to make cheap crap matchstick housing to sell off at exorbitant prices.

Around Manchester the flats going up look shoddily constructed. I'd say they were built along the lines of commercial 30yr-lifespan buildings..

Balls' face is a picture - is he thinking, "6m, 12m, 24m, how long 'til I have got this guys job?"

It's hurting but it's not working.

Rhyming gold from Ed right there. 😉

Suitably raucous behaviour from the HoC. I was wavering, but listening to the rah-rah-toilet paper heckling I realise these chaps deserve their huge salaries and über-perk lifestyle. It's pure democracy in action, people.

😐

Any details on "closing the tax loopholes"?

Or is this just hyperbole to sell the tax cut for the wealthiest?

Suitably raucous behaviour from the HoC. I was wavering, but listening to the rah-rah-toilet paper heckling I realise these chaps deserve their huge salaries and über-perk lifestyle. It's pure democracy in action, people.

Yep, the mother of parliaments is roundly mocked by all other nations 😳

Or is this just hyperbole to sell the tax cut for the wealthiest?

This one.

Today is the end of "we're all in it together".

Most memorable quote of the day, don't reckon he thought of it himself though 😉

so, low and middle earners get an extra 136 quid a year, by way of the increase in Personal allowance. high earners get an extra 5 pence on every pound over teh 150k threshold (and they get their 136 quid too)

keep on sticking it to the rich george 😥

Radio 4 had that as a "£40,000 tax cut for 14,000 millionaires"

[b]Any details on "closing the tax loopholes"?

[/b]

Stamp duty land tax on properties over £2m bought by a company is going to increase to 15% from tonight - he also made crystal clear he will close down any avoidance schemes pro-actively, and importantly, retrospectively should efforts be taken to avoid the tax. That sends a very strong signal that "creative" schemes will be clamped down on.

Are there [b]really[/b] 2 million earning between £7475 and £9205 annually?

Hell, the minimum full-time wage for even 18-20 year olds is more than that.
That's quite sad.

so, low and middle earners get an extra 136 quid a year, by way of the increase in Personal allowance. high earners get an extra 5 pence on every pound (and they get their 136 quid too)

keep on sticking it to the rich george

aah, envy.

Wait til they decide to stop renting a bedsit and buy a mansion though, then we'll stiff 'em.

That sends a very strong signal that "creative" schemes will be clamped down on.

I'll believe it when I see it. Same as banking regulation

Warton - earners over £100K lose already lose their personal allowance - £1 reduction for every £2 earnt. So by £110K, earners at their level don't get any personal allowance at all - and anyone earning between £100K and £115K effectively pays a marginal tax rate of [b]60%[/b].

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"Around Manchester the flats going up look shoddily constructed. I'd say they were built along the lines of commercial 30yr-lifespan buildings.. "

there is a certain block of flats in aberdeen with a 4 person limit on the kitchen floor. (despite the room being big enough to comfortably get more folk in

i best not say who built them as ill get done most likely

but a house party went wrong when as you do a few folk were chatting in the kitchen and the floor decided to fail - not catastrophically but still a failure - rather than fit the correct floor boards instead of cheap ones in the other flats - he issued a notice saying that there was a 4 person limit in the kitchens of the flats ....

looked at a 5 year old house in blackburn(aberdeen) with cracks you could fit your finger in between walls and roof and down one wall corner in....... yet the 60 year old house built from real brick (including interior walls) is not showing any signs of movement.....

so yes goverenment keep this country in business by making buildings that will fall apart and need rebuilt in 30 years due to poor construction methods - planned obscelence much - the cashcow that keeps on giving !

MSP - yes. Interesting to note his admission that gap between now and introduction will lead to loss of revenue (cant remember exact number) as people avoid tax in next 12 month.

OBR:

As discussed further in Box 4.2, a key driver of this shortfall is lower-than-expected revenue from the 50 per cent additional rate of income tax introduced in April 2010.

Estimating the size of such behavioural responses is very difficult, especially for high- income individuals who are likely to be more willing and able to alter their working lives and financial arrangements in response to tax changes than the bulk of the population. The overall size of the behavioural response can be captured by estimating the Taxable Income Elasticity (TIE), the overall responsiveness of total taxable incomes to changes in marginal tax rates. The March 2010 costing used a TIE of 0.35, implying that the introduction of the 50 per cent rate would cut the total taxable income of the affected taxpayers by 5.9 per cent.

HMRC have now undertaken the first ex post analysis of the 50 per cent yield, based on 2010-11 self-assessment tax returns. One striking finding is that high-income individuals appear to have shifted at least £16 billion of income that would have been taxed in future years into 2009-10 so that it would be taxed at 40 per cent rather than 50 per cent. This has a one-off cost to the Exchequer of around £1 billion. The scale of forestalling, which was not factored into the March 2010 Budget costing at all, [b]illustrates how willing and able high-income individuals are to adjust their behaviour in response to changes in tax rates. [/b]

[b]Using a methodology broadly consistent with that of Brewer et al, and adjusting for forestalling, the HMRC study also suggests that the underlying behavioural response to the 50 per cent rate has been more powerful than the March 2010 Budget costing suggested.[/b] It points to a TIE around or above the Brewer et al level and significantly higher than 0.35. In its costing of the move to a 45 per cent rate, the Government has assumed a TIE of 0.45 – broadly in line with the Brewer et al estimate. We believe that this is a reasonable and central estimate, both for the costing and for our underlying forecast. Taken at face value the HMRC study might suggest an even higher TIE, but this would risk placing put too much weight on a single year’s outturn evidence – especially given the complications from disentangling the forestalling effect. There is also reason to believe that the behavioural response to the cut in the tax rate may be smaller than to the increase, because of the costs involved in swiftly reversing expensive decisions on retirement, migration, tax planning and evasion. [b]But it is very important to emphasise the significant uncertainties around all such estimates.[/b]

Part time work vinneyh. Plenty of parents especially out there take shop work in school hours only, or students doing a few shifts of retail or bar work a week.

VAT on sport nutrition drinks. WHAT?

So stamp duty for land over 2million is [b]up to 7%[/b] but the income tax people with the income to afford such land is reduced [b]by 10%.[/b]

Nice mangling of percentages there. If you are going to apply the relative change in tax rates then it should be "stamp duty up by 40% and income tax down 10%"

Of course comparisons between stamp duty and income tax are quite silly as people tend not to buy new houses every year.

Anyway, so where's the double dip recession that Labour and the Lib Dems were adamant would happen?

So by announcing the change, he has enabled the tax avoidance that he premisses to be clamping down on.

He's played that one worse than Brown did when selling the nations gold.

Anyway, so where's the double dip recession that Labour and the Lib Dems were adamant would happen?

As opposed to the strong, surging economic growth we've been experiencing for the last couple of years? 🙄

MSP - its a tax question isn't it? Correct me if I am wrong, but how can it be introduced before the next fiscal year? But your point is interesting as is the pattern of behaviour re tax rates caused last year.

Trail Rat, I know exactly who you mean and the way that company gets permission for all of these developments is beyond me. Plus I think he is a nob of similar standing as the UTG fella.

Is it not the next fiscal year +1?

VAT now to be applied to the rental of hairdressers' chairs.

FFS, scandalous.

Anyway, so where's the double dip recession that Labour and the Lib Dems were adamant would happen?

Not sure where you have been the last few months, but are currently living in it in the UK.

Yes changes [b]from [/b]April 2013. TBH, not sure how these things work ie, how quickly these changes can be introduced. Seems clear that couldn't affect current FY 2011/12. But 2012/13?

MSP - that's one of those basic questions that seems difficult to find an answer. Hopefully someone better informed will help soon!

VAT now to be applied to the rental of hairdressers' chairs.

Will this include Hora's car?

the 'Sheriff of Nottingham budget' as it's being referred to in some circles..

At least the proposals for reducing child benefit entitlement are a bit more reasonable (though I doubt TJ would agree).

VAT changes to chairlifts too - might make Fort William uplift more expensive?

Yunki - there are always winners and losers but overall a neutral budget as foreshadowed.

OBR:

The ‘takeaways’ and ‘giveaways’ in the March 2012 Budget broadly balance out over the five years of our latest forecast, leaving the Government on course to meet its two fiscal targets with much the same margin for error as in November.

Farmer_John - Member
Anyway, so where's the double dip recession that Labour and the Lib Dems were adamant would happen?

[url= http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1616085/Economy-watch-Is-Britain-heading-recession.html ]So will it be a double-dip?
Opinion is divided: the ITEM club says we're in recession; the NIESR says we've narrowly avoided it (that's a turnaround from two months ago when it estimated a 70 per cent risk of a double-dip recession); the British Chamber of Commerce also expects the UK to avoid recession but forecasts paltry growth of 0.6 per cent in 2012 (5 March).
The OECD has also predicted recession for the first-half of the year (28 November). Standard Chartered (12 December), which has made the most accurate forecasts on the economy in the past two years, warned Britain was already in a recession that would last until the middle of next year.[/url]

The chancellor said the 50p rate was uncompetitive, raised "next to nothing" and would fall to 45p next year.

Why not drop it back to 40p then if it's nothing more than decorative?

Wouldn't an "all in this together" budget mean scrapping of all tax and personal allowances, and a flat rate tax on all earnings either by an individual or a company?

The ‘takeaways’ and ‘giveaways’ in the March 2012 Budget broadly balance out over the five years of our latest forecast, leaving the Government on course to meet its two fiscal targets with much the same margin for error as in November.

Thats "neutral" in the Governments future budgeting forecasts, not in its relative impact on different sectors of society.

"Wouldn't an "all in this together" budget mean scrapping of all tax and personal allowances, and a flat rate tax on all earnings either by an individual or a company? "

Yes, but then the 2/3 of households who currently receive more in benefits than they pay in tax would have to pay more.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15843746

True MSP - as I said there are always winners and losers and the next few hours of news bulletin researchers will be frantically searching for representatives of both for the rent-a-quotes

Well, on the plus side there's tax breaks for the UK game and animation industries, hopefully this means we can now compete against Canada and France.

I wonder if Activision and Disney would have still shut down their UK studios last year if the tax breaks had been in place when originally planned. :/