WTF is Mr. Darling on!!!?

We're looking at massive cuts in public services and he's cutting tax on ruddy Bingo!

HOUSE!!!!

its "fair" apparently 🙄

slowhandclap for Darling & Brown.

Budget deficit to be halved by 2013

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8403636.stm

hehe this policy lark is a piece of piss! Look, I can do it;

"Unemployment to be cut to 25,000 by Q3 2011"
"NHS waiting lists to be cut to 37 minutes by June"
"Idiocy to be slashed by 50% in 6 months"

Stoner – to be fair I think that you'll find that we are leading, if not saving, the world with increased levels of idiocy year on year.

The tractor production figures are up again as well.

It's almost as if having a Marxist nonentity as chancellor wasn't the best of ideas.

•One-off 50% tax on bank bonuses of more than £25,000

Ok folks, it's going to be alright, we appear to have found a quick way to balance the books from our (approximately) £180b deficit.

Outstanding economics.

Not having a great grasp of the numbers I do not know what to believe.

I am assuming that it is not as bad as the Conservatives are saying, and that we will in fact find that the deficit and borrowing is brought under control relatively quickly during the next parliament. We will be told that this is all Boy George's doing, and we will not recall that Darling forecast that he would be able to do it.

I am also reasonably confident that many of the people formulating policy and the huge majority of those commenting on it do not really know what they're doing.

🙂

I like the fact that halving the budget defecit still leaves us with a massive and growing national debt…

The cut on bingo duty is a little bizarre to say the least, but was anybody expecting anything dramatic before the next election?

It will be interesting to see just how much cutting the other tories do if they win the election and how much damage it will cause to a fragile economy.

We were vaguely anticipating changes to main residence relief from capital gains tax, a change to inheritance tax on business property and a major rise in capital gains tax rates, possibly with a return to taper relief. Either all that was pure speculation or they've decided to keep their heads down. Capital gains tax rates are conspicuously not mentioned in the press releases and there is scope to raise them in the budget therefore.

The Daily Mash do it again:

"You complete me"

If the 50% tax is on the banks side of the bonus, isn't that just using taxpayers money to pay the taxpayer back for the massive subsidies?

It's a sweet idea. It doubles the cost of paying bonuses in straight cash terms, while the tax paid is not deductible against profits for corporation tax purposes, introducing an element of double-taxation. In theory that makes it pretty inefficient to pay cash bonuses, so a rational econmic actor wouldn't do it. In practice of course there will already be substantial teams in the big accountancy practices working out a way of avoiding it, which will be surprisingly easy as it's certainly cobbled together bollocks with loop-holes big enough to drive a Bentley through. 🙂