The Darling Budget - A Week Tomorrow

[jp1]

A Plastic Bag Hotline?

[Sheer Heart Attack]

They'll put up the duty on ciggies as usual (punishing the poor - very NuLab). I think, as an earlier poster has said, the "war on smokers" has been won and they'll go to pick on drinkers next.

Car users will also be clobbered - nice convenient political target too.

I can see them gradually reducing the amount they give to local authorities. Less for them to spend and the councils will get the blame for council tax rises.

A gold sell-off may be a distinct possibility but I think he might leave that until Gordo's really desperate.

One thing's for sure though. The size and incompetence of the government will remain the same but the cost to us will go up.

The vindictiveness and nannying will continue apace - I can't help being reminded of when Hitler bombed his own cities towards the very end of WWII punishing his people for not being "German" enough. Very NuLabour but clobbering people in the pocket and advertising the populace's stupidity as a way of telling us we're basically walking turdbrains.

[fluffy666]

MIRAS for FTBs

MIRAS for all - on main residential property.

Remove the ability to offset rental income against tax for BTLers.

[right_freds_dead]

All in all, a budget designed almost entirely to keep the housing market pumping and making people feel rich (well, most voting voters), with some guff thrown in to appease other interest groups.

i think for the first time, pumping up housing will be missing.

there in deep crap. i think that maybe, just maybe they realised pumping up housing wasnt such a good idea.

i dont think it will get any attention.

keep mum about it. hope it will go away.

[stuckmojo]

-more tax on alcohol

-some more tax on motorists

-more tax on cigarettes

-more tax on savings

-some other stealth tax

-non doms won't be touched.

[Captain Cavey]

i think for the first time, pumping up housing will be missing.

there in deep crap. i think that maybe, just maybe they realised pumping up housing wasnt such a good idea.

i dont think it will get any attention.

keep mum about it. hope it will go away.

Quite right....surely any attempt to entice FTB’s into the crest of an inevitable crash would be political suicide - resulting in a negative equity trap and life long resentment for the politicos who ensnared them.

...Also, even if they reduced stamp duty for the FTB’s, they’ve still got to get a mortgage from somewhere (and we all know how easy that is now)

Edited March 4, 2008 by Captain Cavey

[simon99]

There doesn't seem to be a Labour budget these days without some tax break for property investors or some expansion to shared ownership schemes to help prop house prices up.

[cartimandua51]

A reduction in the generosity of the lifetime gifts regime for Inheritance Tax -i.e no more outliving a gift of any size by 7 years and having the value fall ouside the estate, and perhaps a reduction in Agricultural and Business reliefs.

Ah - Capital Transfer Tax; I remember it well. What I can't remember is why it was ditched; I do remember it was horrendously complicated & a gift to the tax planning industry.

They might give a boost to stamp duty receipts by removing planners' powers to object to things like barn conversions, & enable agricultural cottages to be sold off for general use.

[symo]

Booze lots of tax, why else all the news stories?

Cigarettes to £7 a pack of 20 (inadvertently making them even cooler)

Stamp duty to rise by around 3% (not much but will keep the sheeple quiet)

Petrol Escalator freeze

Tax cut for corporations (Remember nu labour are skint)

More tax/regulation for small business (Thus stifling any chance of an industrial receovery)

No tax breaks for engineering students/scientists who remain in the UK.

[Realistbear]

U-turn Ali has at least kept Gordon's binge drinking incentives going so as to keep the booze tax revenue going:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/skynews/20080304/...to-45dbed5.html

Violence Rises But 24Hr Drinking To Stay

By Sky News SkyNews - Tuesday, March 4 02:30 pmThe Government has backed 24-hour drinking - despite acknowledging there has been a rise in alcohol-fuelled violence

With 24 hour boozing and proliferation of Casinos Gordon's Britain will become even more chav in its culture.

How much longer must we suffer these morons in our Parliament?

[trekking]

Stamp duty to be paid by the vendor, not the buyer :-)

[echapps]

Booze lots of tax, why else all the news stories?

You read my mind. Media and Government in cahoots.

[Solitaire]

One thing that won't be in the budget

Chancellor Alistair Darling condemned over plan to exclude Northern Rock from Budget

From The TimesMarch 5, 2008

Grainne Gilmore, Philip Webster and Christine Seib

The Chancellor came under fire yesterday over plans to exclude Northern Rock from the public finance figures in his first Budget next week.

Alistair Darling plans to exclude the bank's estimated £100 billion liabilities from the headline figures, both next week and in future. Instead, the figures will be treated as a special item.

Adding the bank's liabilities to the net debt figure would break the Government's own sustainable investment rule that debt should not exceed 40 per cent of gross domestic product. Including Northern Rock would push that to between 43 and 45 per cent.

The Chancellor will use the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) borrowing figures in his Budget on Wednesday, as usual. These were compiled before the bank's nationalisation and do not refer to those liabilities.

The Conservatives claimed that Mr Darling is “cooking the books” to avoid his rules being broken in his first Budget. Ministers have emphasised that the intention is to keep Northern Rock in public ownership only for a limited period and that it would be wrong to distort the overall figures by such an unusual circumstance.

Questioned by the Treasury Select Committee yesterday, ONS officials confirmed that the Treasury had approached them about the possibility of producing two sets of data, one including Northern Rock, and another excluding it.

They said the Treasury's decision on how to present the data next week was a “policy decision”.

Michael Fallon, Conservative MP for Sevenoaks and a member of the Treasury Committee, said that excluding Northern Rock would be “a completely unacceptable fiddle. The purpose of rules is to keep to them.”

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle3486125.ece

[jammo]

Council Tax Tax*, a tax on people paying council tax.

* charge subject to genuine inflationary figures