Budget 2012: what it means for you
Chancellor George Osborne has delivered his 2012 Budget speech. We look at the big announcements affecting our money.
Chancellor George Osborne’s 2012 Budget statement was arguably the most leaked in history. But while there may have been few surprises around announcements such as the abolition of the 50p tax rate and the increase in the tax-free income tax threshold, we now know when they will come into effect.
Let’s take a look at how the major announcements affect different groups of people and when the measures will be implemented:
All workers
The tax-free personal allowance on income tax was due to rise to £10,000 by 2015 – a key Liberal Democrat election pledge. The allowance will increase to £8,105 from this April. But, from next April, the amount will increase to £9,205, as the Chancellor delivers on Nick Clegg’s request to “go further and faster”.
But the basic rate limit will be reduced from £34,370 to £32,245 in April 2013, so people earning over £41,450 will get a quarter of the benefit of basic rate taxpayers. This cut is funding the increase of the Child Benefit threshold to £50,000.
And 20 million of us who pay income tax will receive an annual personal tax statement from 2014/15 showing how much tax and National Insurance we pay and where it goes. This initiative is reported to be costing £800,000 a year and will eventually be rolled out to all taxpayers.
Motorists
Another cut or freeze in fuel duty was by no means a certainty and it didn’t materialise, so the 3p increase in fuel duty planned for August will go ahead. Vehicle excise duty will increase in line with the Retail Prices Index measure of inflation from April this year.
The Fair Fuel Stabiliser means above-inflation rises in fuel duty will return only if the price of oil falls below £45 a barrel.
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Families
Child Benefit was another major debating point in the run-up to the Budget. The threshold for withdrawal has now been raised to an income of £50,000 and it will be reduced gradually. Households where one person earns over £60,000 a year will have their Child Benefit withdrawn.
Pensioners
There will be a single-tier State Pension, based on contributions, likely to be £140 a week but not until 2015 at the earliest. The Second State Pension will be abolished.
Existing age-related income tax allowances will be frozen from April 2013 at their 2012-13 levels for people born after 6th April 1938 until they align with the new income tax personal allowance thresholds for working taxpayers.
There will be an automatic review of the State Pension age published this summer.
Public sector workers
Independent pay review bodies have examined the case for local pay for civil servants and some local authorities will have the option of switching to it.
Additional (50%) rate taxpayers
It was trailed everywhere that George Osborne won the political battle to abolish the 50p top rate of tax. The Chancellor trumpeted the fact that this tax rate is higher than many of our competitor countries and how much income was shifted into previous tax years to avoid it. The only thing that wasn’t clear was the timetable for when this would come into effect.
We now know that it will be 45p from April next year. The Chancellor says the other taxes he has introduced on wealtheir people will raise five times the amount of revenue the 50p rate does.
Members of the armed forces
There will be a £100 million fund for improving the accommodation for the armed forces. The rate of council tax relief and the families welfare grant will be doubled for the families of armed forces members.
Millionaires
Cracking down on tax avoidance was a big theme of Budget 2012 and an additional Stamp Duty threshold of 7% was announced on properties bought for more than £2 million from midnight tonight. There will be also a threshold of 15% on of properties worth more than £2 million bought via companies.
Unemployed people
Beyond a pledge to introduce loans to help young people start their own businesses, there were no new measures announced to tackle unemployment. The Budget Book does confirm the Government has adopted the Low Pay Commission’s recommendation for a below-inflation increase in the minimum wage to £6.19 an hour for those aged 21 and over in a bid to boost recruitment.
Savers
There will be a cap on income tax reliefs of 25% of a person’s income or £50,000, whichever is greater, for anyone trying to claim more than £50,000 of reliefs. There are no changes to ISA savings limits, which will continue to rise in line with inflation.
Small business owners
Corporation tax will be cut by a further 1% to 24% from next month. The two further 1% cuts planned for the next two tax years will still go ahead. That will leave us with a rate of 22%, while the Chancellor made clear his aspiration to cut corporation tax down to 20%.
There will be new Enterprise Zones in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Video games, animation and TV production companies will get further corporation tax breaks. But VAT will be extended to the rental of hairdressers’ chairs, sports drinks, static holiday caravans, cold food “consumed on a supplier’s premises” and certain hot food not already covered by VAT.
First-time buyers
The Stamp Duty exemption for first-time buyers buying properties up to £250,000 in value was due to end on 24th March and it has not been extended. There was nothing else, apart from a reference to the recent launch of the NewBuy scheme to help prospective buyers with obtaining a mortgage on a new-build home,
Shoppers
The Sunday trading law will be relaxed for eight weeks from 22nd July to coincide with the Olympics and Paralympics.
Drinkers
The Chancellor didn’t announce any new measures, but duty will increase by 2% above the Retail Prices Index of inflation from 26th March, as per measures first announced in 2010.
Smokers
A pack of 20 cigarettes will cost 37p more from 6pm tonight.
Commuters
There will be improvements on the rail network in the north of England.
The Government will continue to work with the Mayor of London to look at longer commuter trains, extending the Underground and expanding river routes.
As ever with Budgets, the devil is in the detail and there will doubtless be more measures that were not announced in George Osborne’s speech but feature in the Budget book itself.
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Read George Osborne's Budget 2012 speech in full
What do you think of Budget 2012? Let us know in the Comments section below.
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Most Recent
Comments
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It is laughable to witness the naivete of posters who actually believe the Tory twaddle that by cutting the top rate of income tax, the Government will "increase the tax take". Really ?????? Are these people living in £2m properties suddently going to move home, thus paying the extra stamp duty in some patriotic gesture to help the nation's finances ? Don't think so ! Are the Government suddenly going to change the habit of a life-time and end other tax loop-holes for the rich ? Don't think so; it's easy to make Budget sound-bites about good intentions but the reality is they will not do anything. FACT: the 50% tax rate was introduced since Civil Service advisors stated it would raise addtional hundreds of millions of sterling revenue; now the Government and it's acolytes, are telling us the 50% rate does not raise any real money; OK then, abolish all income tax since it obviously doesn't raise any REAL money !
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It's utterly ludicrous for pensioners to claim they are "worse off". All this moaning about the loss of the extra personal allowance for some of them - which is basically an exercise in tax simplification and to be welcomed (why should pensioners get this extra allowance anyway?) - completely ignores the generous planned increases in the pension to £140 per week and the restoration of the link of pensions to earnings. The earnings link alone is something that people have been campaigning about for years, but all the carpers and moaners about "Tory cuts" conveniently forget about this. Certainly the Labour party wasn't increasing pensions to £140 a week or restoring the earning link when it was busy bankrupting the country! No doubt the pensioners will then start moaning if wages increase less quickly than inflation, which is what the vast majority of working people are experiencing right now and accepting real income cuts. But that's the privilege of being a pensioner: you've nothing to do all day but sit on your final-salary pensions, capital gains from your houses and free perks like MIRAS mortgage relief (now abolished), complain about the good old days, and maximise your claims for free "entitlements". The evidence show definitively that pensioners have been cushioned much more from the effects of the recession than other income groups, but who wants to let evidence get in the way of airing one's prejudices? The same goes for this supposed "tax cut" for higher-rate earners. HMRC's evidence shows clearly that people earning over £150K paid hardly any extra tax, because they deliberately cut their paid income so they wouldn't breach the £150K figure. What is the point of a tax that is so hefty, people change their behaviour and work less hard or even move abroad because they can't see the point of working to acheive high income levels? The 50% tax rate doesn't raise any real money, and cutting it will, if anything, increase the tax take, whilst at the same time the Chancellor is raising *five times* as much money by new capital taxes such as the increase in stamp duty. Again, the moaners completely ignore the evidence in favour of a nauseating stew of class prejudices. I find it astonishing that MK22 has the cheek to complain about the fact he or she is on a pension of 50% final salary and is almost paying the 40% tax rate: oh, what suffering!
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Bengilda - If you live in London, have a couple of kids and keep a house with space for enough beds for everyone to sleep at once.... I know of people who are paying £500 a week for a large single room in North London, (that's 26k before you start on food), heaven knows how much actual houses are.... The 26 k cap is going to make sure that poor people can't live in most of the capital - y'know, that place where such jobs as exist are. Perpetuating the idea that there are two countries - London, where working people live, and Everywhere Else which is full of all the 'scum' who can't afford to live there.
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23 March 2012