Now that the Gordon Brown has delivered his 11th Budget, it's worth looking behind the headlines and what it means for ordinary taxpayers.
A closer analysis reveals that today's Budget sets out increases in spending on public services; raises education spending to its highest ever levels; reforms the tax system to reward work, support families with children, and takes 600,000 pensioners out of income tax.
Full text of today's Budget speech HERE
Measures include:
· Further support for families, by increasing Child Tax Credit by £150 a year, over and above the commitment to increase it in line with earnings to the end of this Parliament. This raises the child element to £2,080 a year lifting 200,000 children out of poverty;
· Increasing the threshold for the Working Tax Credit by £1,200 to £6,420 to improve work incentives (resulting in almost £2 billion extra invested in tax credits as a result today's Budget).
· Child Benefit to rise faster than inflationin three stages to £20 per week. Child Benefit, just £575 a year in 1997 will be over £1,000 by 2010.
· Education spending to rise by £90 billion to 2010-11 the highest ever level, increasing UK education spending from 4.7 per cent of GDP in 1997 to 5.6 per cent by 2010-11.
· 600,000 pensioners taken out of paying income tax through an increase in pensioner tax allowances.
· Simplifying the tax system by aligning the upper earnings limit for national insurance with the higher rate threshold and over indexing both to avoid people losing out.
· Corporate tax rate cut from 30 per cent to 28 per cent from April 2008 together with other significant reforms to the corporate tax system;
· Measures to encourage energy efficiency and tackle climate change including an increase in fuel duty rates from October and increasing Vehicle Excise Duty on the most polluting cars, while cutting it for the less polluting.
· Extending the Financial Assistance scheme from its present budget of £2 billion to £8 billion so that all those who lose pension rights if their company goes bust will now receive help for the first time.
· An updated economic forecast, which shows that the UK economy is stable and growing, and that the Government is meeting its strict fiscal rules for sound public finances over the economic cycle.
And of course, the best news for years: the basic rate of income tax cut from 22 pence to 20 pence from April 2008 with the 10 pence starting rate removed.
It was heartening to see the strength of Gordon Brown, in firm command of the nation's growing economy, versus light-weight David Cameron, who's never taken a tough decision in his life...
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10 comments:
Phil I am not even going to argue the details with you. Ten years in, working people pay more tax, public services are still crap. Nothing he does now will change either of those two things.
But on a different issue...for God's sake get off your knees man. There is nothing worse than a Fuhrer worshipper, and your praise of Brown is like some Goebbels would have said of Hitler. Have a bit more dignity and let's have less of the mindless sycophancy. Anyone would think you are angling for a place in his cabinet. In any case, you are supporting a sure fire loser, the British public might be stupid but even they won't vote for Brown(2 year wonder).
michael:
I was on my knees under the Tories, but managed to get back on my feet thanks to the economic stability delivered over the past ten years by er, Gordon Brown.
No more boom n bust. No more interest rates at 18 per cent.
The Tories slated Brown as mad when he gave independence to the Bank of England for instance - they now embrace the sense of it.
They claimed the mininum wage would put a million on the dole - but employment is now at a record high.
And btw, the average tax take is still below most of Thatcher's years and our public services are certainly improving.
For example, ten years ago half the hospitals in the NHS were older than the NHS itself.
Today half are newer than the Labour Government.
I trust that when the time comes, the British public will recognise the real losers.
As sycophantic as ever.
My tax rate for 2008/2009 has just doubled from 10% to 20%.
Now who once told me that New Labour always looked after the working class?
And who was it who promised in 1997 not to increase tax at all?
Yet more broken promises from the New Labour school of bullshit!
Geoffrey:
You must have missed the opening lines of the budget statement when the Chancellor stressed that it would be a broadly neutral budget, with some reforms.
As someone who raised two children - and knows how it hits the pocket hard - I'm personally, chuffed Gordon Brown has done more to make work pay by putting an extra Billion quid into tax credits targetted at working families.
Talking of bullshit, I was gobsmacked to hear Osborne's opening lines in his budget response:
"We will never takr risks with your mortgage..."
And this from the party that gave us Black wednesday (when cameron was special advisor to the then Tory chancellor), boom and bust, the two worst recessions in the history of this country and interest rates at 18 per cent.
Brown has done more to fight poverty - in this country and around the world - than any Chancellor in memory.
Interest rates were never 18% under the last Tory Government, Phil. If you are going to quote ancient history, at least get the basic facts right.
What about the Labour Government before that...inflation was over 20% under Callaghan.
michael:
so interest rates didn't reach 18% under the tories...talk about splitting hairs:
in fact the official Bank Rate went up to 15%, which had the effect of raising my mortgage to 18%.
You may remember the day: it was 16 September 1992: Black Wednesday, the day the tories lost all economic credibility.
and who put the Bank Rate up by 5% in one day - a Tory Chancellor whose special advisor was one David Cameron, yes the very same!
5% in one day.
That was Tory boom and bust.
Thanks to Gordon Brown we have record low inflation, record low interest rates, record high employment, and the longest period of economic growth in this country for 200 years!
Not sycopantic.
Facts.
geoffrey:
you may very well be right about high interest rates under Callaghan:
The truth is, today's Government is the first in living memory to get interest rates and inflation under control and create steady and sustained economic growth, not boom and bust as we had before.
Not 18%. Not fact.
L is for Labour. L is for Lies.
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