Well, off we go.
"From 2014 taxpayers will receive personal statements, detailing what they have paid and where the money is going."

WTF? He can actually specify where MY tax is going? Wow. Give me a say, Georgie and we may be talking.

And this pointless wheeze will waste how much money he hasn't got?

Depends how the data is delivered - e-mails are pretty cheap? Just rehash the P60 data into some presentable format and combine it with existing government spending data - simple.

If its printed virtually the whole cost will end up back in the government's coffers one way or another.

It will be by email, and it will be automatically generated using a simple formula based around how much tax you paid, and what money has been spent by the government, and what proportion of the total tax revenue has been paid by you personally.

Pointless yes, but expensive? Not really.

Its a nothing story which, I rather fancy would be a "wonderful initiative" if the Labour Party had thought of it.

Old news. Examples were shown on DM website yesterday / day before.

Congratulations George on producing the most fundamentally flawed analysis of the impact of the 50p tax rate.

Apparently it didn't raise as much as was expected, because a lot of people took additional income in the preceding year to avoid it. So rather than waiting until we see what it produces this year (the first year that won't be available as an option to additional rate taxpayers) we're going to get rid of it.

Except we're not going to actually get rid of it, we're going to reduce it so it's only 5p different to the higher rate of income tax. I'm sure that will bring all those departed oligarchs and business leaders that fled the country rushing back.

Perhaps the money raised (five times the current income, apparently) can all be used to set up and run this new means testing system for child benefit?

I have mixed feelings about the tax statement issue, yes it will be interesting to read where the money goes and the similar one that we get from our local council every year is welcome.

On the other hand my sceptical self is of the opinion that this information is another attempt to deflect blame for budget cuts to those most vulnerable, why else would you highlight the amount spent on benefits if not to justify your budget attacks on those on benefits ?

And after all that you have to ask the question, if government are not there to provide health care and financial support to the weaker in society, then just what are they there for ?

just ct through all the cack.

how much has fags and diesel gone up, and have they brought back gambling tax?

fags up by 37p

nothing on diesel

no to the gambling tax

No. I've checked. It would have been equally pointless if the Labour Party had thought of it. It would only be a "wonderful initiative" in that strange binary world you appear to occupy where everyone is either Tory or Labour, and they slavishly, uncritically support everything that party does. I've not seen any evidence for that on here.

This seems to be a sop to the Taxpayer's Alliance, so they can point to money spent on the 'undeserving poor'.

ahh well, may aswell start buying the dodgy £4/pack from the pub.

Did anyone else notice petrol stations putting a penny on a litre last night?

I'm interested to know how it will be by email, given that HMRC don't currently ask for the email addresses of self assessment taxpayers and make a point of saying they won't contact you by email unless you specifically request it to avoid people falling for phishing scams.

IMO it will go out with the paper self assessment statements that are issued to taxpayers, or potentially be available online to those who are registered with HMRC Online services.

There is a games machine duty being applied however.

It's a strange budget really. The press, especially the Labour-supporting scum papers will just jump on the reduction in the highest tax rate to 45%. I really don't see the point of that move. The figures it will 'cost' the country don't seem realistic. The changes to stamp duty aren't going to affect most people and those it does affect will no doubt avoid it elsewhere. The 'average' person doesn't seem to have been affected at all, bar the increases in tobacco (Good) and fuel duty (Bad).

There are some positives in the budget such as fuel duty being frozen for haulage companies and the creation of a tax credits scheme for video game and TV show development companies. But overall, all the budget will do is give Labour an enormous rise in the opinion polls and give their media outlets a week of glorious headlines about how much money the rich are going to save.

Apart from the average pensioner, who is going to see the amount they can have in income before they start paying tax reduced in real terms for at least the next two years, possibly three depending on how long it takes to make the £10k personal allowance a reality.

Still, they're only the fastest growing group in society eh, who cares about them?

Hit the nail on the head there. Not only was the 50p tax rate announced a year before it came in thus allowing the rich to bring forward income and avoid the tax, ever since the coalition (and even under Labour I think) the rate was mentioned as being temporary which means people may have decided to defer income to avoid paying tax now in the hope Osborne would look after them - which he has done.

Channel 4 News reported that A4e's Emma Harrison and others brought forward their 2010/11 income to 2009/10 to avoid the extra 10p in tax that came in from April 2010.



Well the argument goes that because this was a "temporary" tax rate then these people may well have decided to do as I say above or if they could not then simply put up with the 50p rate because moving out of the UK is a high cost exercise in itself and would likely lose them money in the short term.

My opinion is few if any left with this as the main reason for going.

What is certainly true however is one years tax returns with the new rate in force are no basis to conclude how effective it is. It would need to run for several years so the effects of bringing forward or deferring income worked their way out of the system and so would have the loss of any revenue due to people leaving the country as the ones minded to leave would have have left.

The fact these so called behavioural responses to the 50p have not worked their way out of the system will not stop Osborne saying relatively low tax revenue for the 2010-2011 tax year is proof it does not work.

It also ignores the rather pertinent fact we had a recession and many high earners in the financial sector will have had a lower income because of that - so less tax to be taken.

They have only had the 2010-2011 figures for 7 weeks and have simply not had the time to do the sums properly and include estimations for what the likes of Harrison did, the recession and so on.

Any such figures will simply be an excuse to lower the rate for the rich and it will be an outright lie to say it has failed.

Its the wrong solution to lower than estimated revenues anyway.

If such behavioural responses will lower the tax taken then punish that behaviour, not reduce the tax.




The amount of money raised by the measures that will supposedly make up for lowering the 50p tax rate such as the stamp duty increase on properties sold over £2m is being debated on various sites commenting on the budget and by the looks of it, it won't come close to even covering the loss in revenue from the lowering the 50p tax rate despite the factors that will make the amount collected from this in 2010-11 lower than expected.

The original estimate for the 50p rate was it would raise £2.7bn. The estimates for the stamp duty measure amount to a mere £300m.

They'll be privatising themselves out of existence soon, so we may not need them.