Budget
Budget
Tax Income tax
• From April 2012 personal allowance will increase by £630 to £8105.
• This increase won't be restricted to basic rate tax payers so no one else will be pulled into the higher rate tax band.
• The 50% tax rate will be reviewed and potentially removed if it has not generated sufficient revenue.
National insurance
• Income tax & National Insurance may be merged to a single tax if it is viable to do so.
• However, this will not result in pensioners having to pay National Insurance.
• The 1% National Insurance increase scheduled for April 2011 will go ahead as planned.
Inheritance tax
• The Inheritance Tax Rate will be reduced by 10% for anyone who leaves 10% or more of their estate to charity.
Other tax
• From April 2012 the thresholds for Income Tax, National Insurance, ISAs and Inheritance Tax will increase by the CPI measure of inflation instead of by RPI.
• Taxes on owners of high value property will be reformed.
• Measures to clamp down on tax avoidance will be introduced.
• Income tax relief on the Enterprise Investment Scheme will increase from 20% to 30% in April, 2011.
Housing
First time buyers
• £250 million commitment has been made to help first time buyers.
• A new shared equity scheme - First Buy - will help 10,000 families to purchase a new build home.
Mortgage Support
• The Support for Mortgage Interest scheme will be extended for another year.
Council tax
• Every council across the UK has agreed to freeze council tax for the coming year.
Water bills • Public money will be used to help cut water bills for customers in the South West of England.
Alcohol & Tobacco
Alcohol
• A reduced rate of tax will apply to low strength beers from 1st October, 2011.
• A higher rate of tax will be applied to high strength beers from this date.
• There will be no change to any other alcohol duty rates.
Tobacco
• Tobacco duty rates to increase by 2% above inflation.
• Tax on hand-rolled tobacco will increase by an additional 10%.
Transport
Fuel
• Fuel duty will be cut by 1p a litre from 6pm today (23rd March, 2011).
• The planned 1p increase in fuel duty scheduled for April will be pushed back a year.
• The subsequent inflation-linked rise scheduled for April 2012 will be pushed back until the following summer.
• A Fair Fuel Stabiliser will be introduced from tomorrow - fuel duty will go down when fuel prices increase, & go up when fuel prices fall.
• The fuel duty escalator will be scrapped for the rest of this Parliament.
• A rural fuel duty scheme will be piloted.
Approved mileage allowance
• Approved mileage allowance payments will increase to 45p a mile - 39p a mile for the first 10,000 miles & 5p a mile thereafter.
• It will also be paid for volunteers travelling as passengers.
Road tax
• Vehicle Exercise Duty will increase by inflation only.
Trains
• £200 million will be invested in regional railways.
Flights
• The planned increase in air passenger duty will be delayed until next year.
Employment & Education
Employment
• A new start up scheme to support entrepreneurs - Start Up Britain - will be launched.
• 21 new enterprise zones will be introduced.
• Entrepreneur's Relief will be doubled to £10 million on 6th April.
Education
• 24 new university technical colleges will be set up.
• 100,000 places in new work experience schemes will be introduced.
• 50,000 apprenticeship places will be created over the next four years.
Pensions
State pension
• A new, single tier, flat rate pension based on contributions will be introduced subject to a consultation.
• This will be worth approximately £140 a week but it will take years to implement.
• Current pensioners won't be affected by the change.
• Plans to introduce automatic increases to the State Pension Age have been brought forward subject to review.
Public sector pensions
• Public sector workers will have to increase their pension contributions by approx. 3%.
• The government will consult on scrapping final salary pensions for public sector workers & replacing them with career average pension benefits.
I don't get a pension. I have made other arrangements.
Heathers going to kill you way beforehand ?
Thats the plan.
^^^ it will though,
the public have this habit of "adapting" to living costs and getting by,.....so if they didnt give us the £10 a month back, we would of complained, but we would of survived, and adapted
Now we get £10 back, straight into your wallet, almost like free cash.........it isnt........but it may aswell be with all the taxes etc.
We're not getting £10 back....
That's just put that way to sound like a good deal. What they're doing is (on average) you will be charged £10 less a month in tax etc. Which sounds OK till you realise that this is after all the increases that maybe pushed your outgoing tax up by £50.
So you only pay an extra £40 instead of £50... but it's still an extra £40.
It's like all the shops that tempt you with stuff like "buy this £3000 sofa now for only £1000 and save £2000!!!!!"
All the emphasis is on "what you save" - they kind of gloss over the fact you're still parting with £1000 of your hard-earned. You're not saving anything, you're spending £1000...
Personally I'm not impressed. He takes 1p off petrol and taxes the oil companies to make up for it, so they'll just increase the price at their end to cover it - net result: no change, and we all still get screwed over...
i guess it depends on your outgoing,
if you use the daily mails budget calculator it shows how much you benefit by, personally i dont drink, dont buy fags in the uk, and ahve very little expenditure on anything thats had a tax rise
I'm surprised we're complaining this much at the first budget for quite a while where taxes for the normal person are only being cut - hardly anything as far as I can figure has gone up.
The 1p off fuel coupled with the scrapping of next months 4p rise is an effective 5p cut in fuel - I think that's pretty substantial, what did we expect, a 20p cut or something? Yes I agree there is a risk that the oil company tax will filter back down to us but only time will tell on that, and also the VAT rise on fuel negates some of the cut, overall it is still a cut.
Then there's also the personal allowance rise to consider.........
I don't quite get the sofa analogy - you don't have to buy a sofa so that's irrelevant. You have to pay tax, so if the amount you pay comes down that is a benefit :biggrin:
As I said earlier, the only thing I don't understand nor agree with is the proposed cut in corporation tax.
parthiban As I said earlier, the only thing I don't understand nor agree with is the proposed cut in corporation tax.
parthiban As I said earlier, the only thing I don't understand nor agree with is the proposed cut in corporation tax.