Well the pre-Budget speech has come and gone and we are now left to rummage through what potential damage the chancellor’s speech may have on our finances.
As expected, Alistair Darling played it relatively safe so as not to alienate voters who may be unsure which political party to vote for in the looming general election.
But Darling did pull a brave one out of the hat –even although it was a tactic to win votes – and that took the form of a super-tax that is to be imposed on banks which pay their bankers’ large bonuses.
Taxing the bankers
From now on, any UK bank that pays its bankers a bonus in excess of £25,000 will be subject to a 50 per cent one-off super-tax. It will be the bank, not the banker who will ultimately be responsible for paying this tax.
Darling will be hoping that this tax is popular with voters, and it may well be. We just have to remember the public outcry of the previous few months when the banks continued to pay large bonuses to staff, despite being bailed out by taxpayer’s money.
What about the rest of us?
There have been some tax rises too for the rest of us with an extra 0.5 per cent being added to National Insurance contributions from April 2011, and VAT will, at the start of January return to its previous rate of 17.5 per cent.
And despite calls for an extension to the stamp duty holiday, properties over £125,000 will again have to pay 1 per cent tax from 1 January, 2010.
So it seems Darling has played a politically clever game and has been cautious in his dealings but does this make you fear the Budget’s of the future, after all the recession we’re arguably still fighting, has got to be paid for at some point, one way or another.
