Join the debate

What did you think of this year’s Budget? A brilliant masterpiece from a worthy Prime Minster in waiting? Or a complete fiddle from a tax and waste Chancellor?

Have your say below.

Comments

[Andrew Lukes]

If you want to be greener (don't we all - if only for our children' sake) then put more tax on petrol and diesel so the dreaded gas guzzlers and frequent users really pay up front for what they use.

[brian]

my opinion on the budget?,fantastic if you're a high earner not so good if you're not.i actually end up paying more in tax!.what an absolute bloody disgrace!,i earn 17k not done anything for me.

[John Sullivan]

Regarding the new Group G road tax, it was suggested in a number of articles that the £400 rate would only apply to cars bought after April 2006. There seems to be no mention of this is the press reports. So where do owners of large but old "gas guzzlers" stand. As these vehicles are always low MPG creatures and the price of fuel being so high the tax and insurance may actually exceed the value of the vehicle. Time to visit the scrap yard perhaps?

[N Mortier]

RE Today's Money page 11.

You did not mention that Gordon considers pensioners earning over 25,550 incl State Pension to be Super Rich. He takes back their age allowance completely.

Regards

[Doris Silveston]

This Chancellor is far from efficient as the vast amount of money he needs shows this up. We all have to watch our pennies, none more so than the pensioners, of which I am one.

Why when he wants to put certain measures in place it is done by midnight the same day but when it comes to an increase in allowances etc. it takes more than twelve months?

Some twelve months ago I named him Gordon Robin MacHood Brown and said he was robbing the poor to make the rich richer. So you can imagine how amazed I was by the front of the Times Money page. I had just said to my husband that I could feel a letter to the Times coming on about the very subject and there it was, I was beaten to the headline.

[John Kenneth]

This Budget is a creature of its creator: an obsessive-compulsive device to keep power and control in his hands. If Blair’s presidential style causes discomfort, Brown is frightening. (It is reassuring that someone else has discerned a certain similarity between iron Uncle Gordon and a dictator.)
Cameron puts the NHS first on his list of priorities, for Brown it is education. Both aims are admirable, but both can’t simultaneously be the country’s first priority. The UK is and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, most likely, a nation of fewer marriages and fewer children, while the elderly population increase by the day. Cameron is playing heads-up ball putting the NHS first, and Brown continues to play with himself.

One disillusioned ex-Labour supporter

[Bernard Brothman]

I am jealous. In the USA we pay 15% for income of $15,100 to $61,300, then 25% to $123,700, then 28% over that. At $188,450 we pay 33% and 35% over 336,550. Plus most US states have income taxes of another 4% to 9%.

[Brian Collinson]

If you look on the DVLA web site it states that cars with co2's of 225 or more registered before 23rd March 2006 will pay road tax of £205. IF cars of CO2's of 225 or more are registered on or after 23rd March 2006 they will be in Group G and will pay £300. Bryn Jones blog in Saturday's Times will therefore pay £205, not £300 for his cherished 1987 Jaguar V12 5.3 litre. The high gas guzzling rate only applies to vehicles registered on or after 23rd March 2006, budget day 2006!

[Ian W Lindsey]

As a career banker I used to lend to clients I trusted completely on an unsecured basis and those I was did not completely trust on a secured basis. However I would not touch Gordon Brown with a bargepole.

He should return to Scotland and help lower the average IQ there while increasing the average IQ in England.

[Ian W Lindsey]

Your article on IHT reduction failed to mention you can give unlimited lifetime gifts out of current income, not subject to the 7 year rule, so long as you can prove the gifts are from that portion of your income which is not spent.

Your so-called tax experts simply ignore this provision in the IHT rules. Get it right in future.