The budget....

The payment has been announced. £2000 off on I presume a new car when scraping a car over 10 years old.

Yes, a colleague has just told me, I'd like more details though, I think it has to be specific cars you're buying so it still might not make a difference to us, depending on the price of the new car IYSWIM

Details would be good. Our car is 11 years old and we were holding out for the budget before thinking about replacing it so we can see what happens with the price of cars and if it's worth using this for a new one.

That'll suit me, I have a real talent for scraping cars ? (sorry)

And booze no doubt ?

Is it true that if all the UK smokers stopped smoking then the NHS would fall apart? Or is it all bollox?

Booze going up 2% from midnight. And fuel duty going up again in September. Gah!

Public spending to be cut too - but no details ....

A year?! What's the point.

New 45% rate up to 50% and those on 100k to lose whole of personal allowance, not just half.

Public borrowing to increase to £175bn this year

Borrowing levels to rise by £173bn, £140bn, £118bn and £97bn in years after

?

What does that mean? Are they robbing the rich to pay the poor? <confused>

and what would be wrong with that? ?[poor person icon]

There's a new tax rate from next year for those on over 150k- it was going to be 45% but is now going to be 50%.

Those on over £100k were going to lose their personal allowances on a sliding scale, with those on 150k getting no allowance at all. This has been changed so that noone on 100k gets a personal allowance.

So basically, income tax up quite a bit for higher earners.

Absolutely nothing old girl, will explain when I've spoken to my property consultant about some nice overseas property and my shipping chap about moving the family silver and Griselda's pony. [rich person icon]

Haha!

Because if someone has worked really hard to get a job that pays well, why should they be punished by giving their money to those in poorly paid jobs? Doesn't seen fair to me.

But saying that, I know that a lot of nurses/midwives/carers work hard to get their jobs and don't get paid well. That's shocking, and is the fault of the NHS. But should those who earn over £100K be penalised for that?

I know a people who earn £100K and I wouldn't call them 'rich' .

yes. labour has spunked all the money we earned for it in the past ten years, has no reserve, and has to come to us for more by raising the rate. they cant put up the stnadrd rate as that would lose them the election (never mind anything else) so hence they ve chosen to do this.

the borrowing figures are terrifying and clearly shows total incompetence on the part of the treasury in recent years. scandalous in fact.

you really are a prize winning wanker

I don't think I want to use that calculator, i'd rather not know.

Doesn't look like the £2k for old cars will help us, it's saying 'new' cars which are mostly too expensive for us unless we buy something like a smart car. Never mind.

Who is Alistair Darling? Robin Hood ?

Yup, can change hands without missing a stroke.

well I guess we all live to our means Sparks, and it's not good when the 'means' is reduced or taken, we've all felt that in some way or another. I'm convinced some companies are cashing in on this recession. H's company for instance have been in the local papers recently for having record profits and yet they've frozen pay rises this year and have taken away overtime [angry icon]

That's awful ?

I wonder if Tescos will be passing on their massive profits to any of their staff..........? ANyway, that's a different story.

LaP - I know, I mean I know there are problems with under age drinking, but I am a responsible adult (sometimes) and why should I be penalised for treating myself to a glass of wine after a 12 hour day?? It pisses me off. I like smoking too. I smoke a packet a week. Some days I won't smoke at all, but if I am out I can smoke half the packet in one night. I enjoy it., but at over £6 a packet I might just forget it.

It's my local elections soon, I really need to see who is up and decided who to vote for.

Aren't the new tax thresholds fairer all round though? I've heard it said on here many times that the higher earners should have their tax bands increased so that the amount of tax people are paying is more proportionate to their salaries and even across the board? Oh, and people in poorly paid jobs pay tax too, it's not only there to fund the benefit system.

I also agree with ONE that a lot of the super rich will find ways around this with creative accounting and offshore oojamaflips.

I'm not surprised cigarettes and booze have gone up, they always will. It's no biggie really, smokers will always find money for fags and drinkers will always find money for booze.

I did watch it and whilst I don't have the best level of understanding with regards to politics why on earth are they leaving some things to start in 2010, how much worse can the economy get between now and then?

When do we get to vote Brown out? The best bit about watching the budget was watching David Cameron rip into Labour.

Petrol has gone up too hasn't it? So we can't really afford a new car so the £2k won't help us and we can't really afford to run the existing cars we have, think i'll go out and buy a pushbike ?

Doesn't make me feel any happier about it, though!

It doesn't sound like a lot of money, when you consider the super-rich figures that are flaunted around. And I don't suppose anyone earning 100k/year would consider themselves rich. But they still earn roughly 4 times the average salary, bearing in mind that two thirds of the population earn less than the average salary.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7581120.stm

Look at the tiny proportion of the population who earn more than 1K a week, let alone people who earn the almost 2K a week needed to hit this 100K tax bracket.

I'm not going to comment on whether the tax change is fair or just, I don't know enough but I do think these people are rich - not compared to Posh and Becks or Suhallan but relative to vast majority of the population, yes, they are doing rather nicely.

I know nothing about politics, so i wont even pretend that i do but i did think the get £2,000 off a new car starts from the end of this month and then ends March 2010

not that i can afford a new car,

I don't have a problem with higher earners paying more. I really dislike the scrapping of personal allowances though as it seems such an underhand way to do it and will create such unfair results (based on what was said- possibly the actual workings are more complex). If you earn £101k you'll lose your allowance, making you worse off than someone on 99k.

I agree that 100k is a good income. It's definitely not the sort of income ONE was talking about though (clever accountants and offshore accounts etc). The fact is if you're British, living in Britain and paying PAYE (as most of those affected will be) there's nothing you can do to cut your income tax bill, so saying people won't be affected is wrong.

Sparkley, I would argue that what you earn isn't in direct proportion to how hard you work/have worked - whilst it's true that, in general, someone in a responsible professional position earning well above average will have had a long period of training etc. their work is often more pleasant, interesting and comfortable than someone with a basic education who works in a hard manual job - who is to say the professional should get more?

Even if there were some magic formula to say which jobs should receive higher remuneration than others, it would only be truly fair if there were also true equality of opportunity. People earn what the market says they should (in terms of supply and demand for a particular profession), and in many ways it's that's fairly arbitrary amount and not something to which someone is intrinsically entitled. For me, fairness dictates that wealth should be distributed - many won't agree with that, but even the provision of public services like street lighting, roads etc. is in a sense redistributive (because everyone can use them regardless of ability to pay). How do you define what level of redistribution is effective or just? It would be fairly extreme to say "none".

To keep it in perspective, the UK still has one of the lowest income tax rates in Europe. That said, I think this most recent increase is fairly pointless gesture politics.

And 100k is about 4 times the average wage, so it certainly is "rich" by most definitions of that word.

You're right, it starts May until March 2010. But previously they'd been using Germany as an example and possibly saying you could get a car up to 1 year old but now all I keep reading is 'new'. New is still too expensive for us, maybe it'll help some people though. Guess it depends what new car you're looking at buying.

I agree with you about the personal allowance, KN, it does seem unfair. It's something that surely either everyone or no one should get.