Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

This one is a corker, until your 21st birthday.



Jobs

• Under-21s taken out of employers' national insurance contributions

max - that's not a bad start at all ..... i guess there could have been variations on that, but ultimately, any scheme has a finite time line

A bad one for the market? (It is down)

ie. ISAs can soon be all in cash.

Some are saying Milly was short on detail on the budget but It was a fantastic speech, BUT now we know why..................cheating Tories yet again...............

Apparently, Osborne's team didn't send an embargoed version of the speech to Labour an hour before the Budget- as they're supposed to. Which looks pretty much like a deliberate attempt to sabotage the Labour leader's speech.

This part of the story's been flying around for a bit: loads of journalists have noted it and will report it tomorrow.

Milly odds on favourite to be PM next year bookies reporting.

BUDGET COMMENT
my accountants have no axe to grind, other than to help their clients, so their comment is worth reading - it'll almost certainly be reiterated by other professionals too

i could have paraphrased it a bit, but then no doubt some clown would have accused me of massaging it

#7 is particularly vicious, but on the brave assumption that HMRC will not misuse this power, then it has a lot to commend it

1) Annual Investment Allowance
Great news for companies looking to invest in capital equipment with 100% tax relief on capital investment up to £500,000 per year from next month. This is a rise from £25,000 only a year ago! Companies will need to plan their expenditure carefully to maximise the amount they claim.

2) Research & Development (R & D)
For those small companies undertaking Research & Development in excess of their profits, the rate of repayment for loss making companies increases from 11% to 14.5%.

3) Pensions
A major surprise on pensions with restrictions removed and flexibility given on unlocking the value of pension funds. The Chancellor announced ”no caps, no drawdown limit and no annuity”.

The proposed changes allow you to unlock the whole of your pension fund, provided you satisfy the reduced annual income requirements of £12,000. It is likely this will create significant planning opportunities now that the punitive 55% tax rate on drawdown has been replaced.

Owner managers, who have historically shied away from investing in pensions due to the restrictions on accessing their fund in retirement may now want to reconsider.

4) Exporting
The Chancellor announced he wanted to support a “Britain that builds”, aimed at encouraging owner managed businesses who export. Export finance loans were doubled to £3bn and the interest rates on them were cut by one third – this means the UK will have the most competitive export finance in the world.

Changes will also be made to Air Passenger Duty to level tax rates on long haul flights to encourage exports around the world.

To improve links across the UK to foreign markets, the Chancellor also announced start-up support for new routes from regional airports.

5) Employers
The grant funding for apprenticeships is to be doubled and extended to potentially include graduate apprenticeships, with the aim of creating an additional 100,000 apprenticeships.

There was a reminder in the Budget about the employment allowance, giving £2,000 reduction in employers National Insurance bill. From 6 April 2015 every employer with employees under the age of 21 will not be required to pay employers NIC on those employees.

Whilst these new measures help to reduce the cost of employment, the red tape in administering them may add costs.

6) Energy & fuel costs
A £7bn energy fund was announced aimed at reducing energy bills for British manufacturers, predicted to save mid sized manufacturers £50,000 on their energy bill.

Businesses buying designated plant & machinery, which is energy efficient, reduces water use or improves water quality may qualify for enhanced capital allowances.

Fuel duty rises planned for later this year, have once again been scrapped giving help to those businesses with high fuel bills.

7) Tax avoidance
A major shift in policy was announced today with the introduction of accelerated payments for disputed tax schemes. This is a requirement for taxpayers to pay up front any tax under enquiry. Many taxpayers will be concerned with the use of retrospective legislation to cover arrangements they entered into many years ago, believing them to be perfectly legitimate tax planning. This could lead to taxpayers facing significant tax bills with relatively little time to raise the funds.

BUDGET
Thomas Henry Carver emails: I have always supported the Tory Party since leaving Labour, and find my faith has been justified. What can you do for your country not what can the country do for you, is why we are coming out of the darkness and into the light! Savings for the pensioners is right and proper, for these people have been the backbone of the country over troubled times and deserve to be treated well.

It might give the young-uns a chance to learn something of value with which to hang onto a job.

But I suspect there will be a lot oh "happy birthday, here is your cards" type jobs out there.

BREAKING NEWS>>>>>>>>>>>

FORGET THE TALKING HEADS – THE OBR CONFIRMS THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT THE ‘RECOVERY’
19/03/2014 · by skwalker1964
·
There will be hour upon hour of coverage on TV and in the press today and tomorrow about George Osborne’s budget, with Labour picking holes and the Tories and LibDems fighting for the ‘credit’ for the supposed recovery.

I’ve already listened to more than I can stomach of Osborne, Ken Clarke and others claiming that their ‘hard work’ and, of course, ‘tough choices’ (we’re all in it together, after all) have resulted in the supposed economic recovery, the fall in ‘worklessness’ (their attempted fudge after the UK Statistics Authority rapped their knuckles for claiming unemployment has fallen massively when in reality it’s dropped hardly at all or risen slightly, depending when you measure from) etc.

But the government’s own OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) laid bare the truth in a single phrase. Speaking to journalists a few moments ago, and covered by BBC News (who so far have failed to spot the telling point), the Chairman of the OBR, Robert Chote, said this:

Looking over the forecast as a whole..net trade makes very little contribution and government spending cuts will act as a drag.



Whatever the hype and the spin, we now have it in plain language from the most official source: government spending cuts act as a ‘drag’ on growth.

Since this government has cut, cut and cut again its spending on everything (including the NHS, in spite of claims to the contrary), this means – in the clearest possible way – that the government has consistently delayed the economic recovery.

And now they’re trying to claim credit for the appearance of something that they’ve done their best to impede, and which would have been here ages ago if it weren’t for their actions.

They’re like someone trying to stop the earth spinning but then claiming credit for the sunrise when they fail.

"revolving door" employment is certainly already common practice in the fashion industry ..... as soon as someone's employment is about to reach "redundancy rights", they are on to a strong chance of being booted out

that said, i'm not convinced you're right, on the basis that this incentive is exactly that - i.e. for those who are looking to add employees, this may tip the balance

i see the expected partisan "yardage" is coming thick and fast

shame really, as i thought my accountants' professional comment (38460) was well worth the read, but it's now been pretty much swamped

Cynic
I like the tax avoidance scheme. If you are regestered under one of the tax avoidance schemes, you have to pay the tax up front then complain after and/or go to court. It is expected to raise a fair bit.

Overall, I see it being good business, especially the investment tax breaks.

‘The Budget that confirms Britain is worse-off under the Tories’

Mr Os-bean: As Ed Miliband gave his response to the Budget, George Osborne had a gormless smile on his face that made him look like Mr Bean. This is not him – but it’s the closest image I could find at short notice.

If a Conservative government is returned to office after the 2015 election, there will be yet more spending cuts and service cuts afflicting hard-working, low-paid families.
That was the message for most people in George Osborne’s latest attempt at a Budget speech today.

There were plenty of groan-worthy moments as the part-time chancellor trotted out the Coalition’s catchphrases: “We will fix the roof while the sun is shining” (groan. The job is taking so long, one has to question whether the contractor is Con-ning the client). “We are all in this together” (groan). Oh really?

Benefit spending is to be capped at £119 billion per year, albeit rising with inflation; public sector pay “restraint” will continue for the foreseeable future. This is from the government whose Prime Minister was confirmed, only minutes previously, as having approved 40 per cent pay rises for his special advisors!

Most significant is the fact that Osborne avoided mentioning ordinary working people for most of his speech; this was a budget for businesses, with the benefits reserved for fatcat bosses.

No major advanced economy in the World is growing faster than the UK, said Mr Osborne; more people are in work. This appears to be borne out by current employment figures (although it should be noted that this is due to a vast and questionable boom in self-employment – the number of employees has dropped by 60,000).

Where is the benefit to the British economy? Why has the deficit not been eliminated? Osborne said it stood at £157 billion in the year he came to office, and would be £108 billion this year, but in fact £39 billion was removed due to measures brought in by the previous Labour chancellor, Alistair Darling. He has cut government spending by something like £80 billion so far, but the deficit has dropped by - possibly – £10 billion. Not a good start to his speech.

There will be further investment in high-speed rail, even though there is no way of predicting whether this hugely costly investment in making train journeys 20 minutes faster will create any economic improvement.

There will be money to fund new centres for medical research – but will these be absorbed by private health firms after the public purse has paid for them?

There will be investment in faster extraction of oil from the North Sea – aiming to get as much as possible out before the Scottish referendum, in order to impoverish the Scots if they decide to go for independence?

And there will be investment in low-cost energy (finally killing the highly questionable green agenda) – meaning money for shale gas companies, and to hell with the environmental cost.

All this investment will go into businesses whose main contribution to the Treasury – Corporation Tax – has already dropped by a quarter (from 28 per cent to 21 per cent) and will go down to 20 per cent this year. This is less than the lowest level of Income Tax.

Up go the profits – down go the tax payments. Who benefits?

Council tax in England remains frozen, meaning fewer public services.

The personal tax allowance is to rise, so people may earn £10,500 before paying tax. This is nowhere near enough to offset the massive drop in living standards that has been caused by the Tory-led Coalition. The cost of living has risen for 44 out of the 45 months of this Parliament – for the whole period, if the earnings of high-paid bankers are removed from the calculation.

The threshold for payment of the 40p tax rate is to rise, so fewer people will pay the higher rate.

Savers are to be helped but – again – this is not a boost for the poor. Most working and unemployed families don’t have any spare money to put into the banks. How does it help them to know they would not pay any tax on savings up to £15,000 in an ISA, when they cannot afford to open one?

And there is a new Pensioner Bond for rich senior citizens (poorer pensioners don’t live long enough to benefit).

As Ed Miliband said in his scathing response, the Coalition can afford to give a tax cut of £200,000 per year to bankers who earn £5 million – but can’t afford £250 per year extra for nurses.

Mr Miliband said the Budget speech was more significant in what it hid than in what it actually said.

Working people are suffering under the Bedroom Tax, under cuts to their tax credits, and they are having to visit food banks if they want to eat.

This is a government that gives with one hand, but takes back much more with the other.

And the Conservatives have the bare-faced cheek to call themselves “The Workers’ Party”.

oh lord! .... yet another 6 yards of verbiage to blanket out any intelligent comment from others, especially those who might have a view that is not labour-party-endorsed

hays - based on the comment in my post 13640 which certain peeps here just want to swamp with reams of guff rather than to comment upon intelligently and succinctly .....

on balance, i thinks it's quite a good budget too - again, i'ld refer you back to post 13640

#7 worries me a bit, though is suspect it will only hit those who have taken "aggressive" avoidance measures
the prob with fighting HMRC, even now, is that even if you are proved to be absolutely within your rights - whatever you are arguing about - you cannot reclaim the costs
to my mind, that is totally unfair

This is striking and one would have to ask JUST WHAT HAS GONE WRONG WITH THE TORIES........................

Our polling shows that Labour currently has the advantage; among those in full and part time employment they lead the Conservatives 44% to 27%. This is a 17 point lead, compared with the 4 point lead that they enjoyed among the electorate at large in our national poll the month before, which had Labour on 34% and the Conservatives on 30%. 12% of workers who had voted Conservative in 2010 would now vote Labour, whilst more 2010 Liberal Democrat voting workers would now vote Labour (40%) than would still vote Liberal Democrat (35%).

I am luck that I don't now see most of it. I filtered Fred about a week ago. I have filtered gf a couple of days ago after he started reposting Fred's posts. It is now a very pleasant thread.

FFS!!!
are you really totally incapable of doing other than c+p'ing several yards of guff?
do you really have no sensible and succinct comment of your own - i care not whether you agree or disagree with another's view?

hays - i refuse to be bullied - for that is effectively what it is - into squelching anyone
indeed, i would welcome the view of "the usual suspects" with regard to post 13640 =- my accountants' comment

Fred the truth below...........


cynic - 18 Mar 2014 18:29 - 5062 of 5086

go and banish yourself :-)
it always amuses me that for some strange reason you think I am glued to hays