Nigel Stanley

The increase in CGT is welcome as far as it goes, but it is a very long way from the Lib Dem call for CGT rates to be equalised with income tax rates.

The 28 per cent rate means that there is still a strong incentive to use accountancy tricks to turn income into a capital gain (as we explain here).

The exemption for standard rate tax payers may have looked to MPs like a concession to the less well-off, but will more likely benefit rich families. Very few people own enough assets to give any kind of CGT liability, yet 60 per cent of CGT bills got to those who either pay no income tax or the standard rate.

This is because tax avoiders are adept at transferring assets to non-income earning spouses and dependents thus gaining as many as possible ~£10,000 CGT allowances as possible.

The Chancellor was strong on CGT before the budget, but this is weak stuff.

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Brendan Barber

This Budget got the big judgement about the economy wrong.

The economy is still fragile, and today’s measures will certainly slow recovery and could well stop it in its tracks. Spending and benefit cuts together with the VAT increase will take much needed spending power out of the economy. The private sector has been hit as hard as the public sector today.

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Paul Nowak

George Osborne’s announcement that public sector workers will face a two-year pay freeze will be met with wide-spread consternation. To expect 4.3m hard working public servants to take a pay freeze at a time when, as IDS report, Britain’s directors have just pocketed an inflation busting increase of 7% , on top of a 22.5% hike in bonus payments, beggars belief.

Let’s be clear – when you factor in inflation, this isn’t a pay freeze, its a pay cut.

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Richard Exell

Recent reports from two ends of the age spectrum reveal the cuts’ threat to social care. Last week, Age UK reported that “cuts to social care budgets will put thousands of older people’s lives at risk.”

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Richard Exell

Conservative newspapers the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph report today that Ministers will announce tomorrow that 150 of the country’s 350 magistrates’ courts will be closed.

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Owen Tudor

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou spoke to the World Congress of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) this afternoon. Although he is presiding over huge, unpopular cuts in the Greek welfare state, it was the Greek trade union movement that asked for him to speak, because in ITUC President Sharan Burrows’ words, “he above all knows what it is like to run a government in the eye of the storm.”

He called explicitly for the 0.05% financial transactions tax proposed by trade unions and NGOs, which he claimed could raise €240bn across the EU.

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Nicola Smith

A number of reported cuts from the Midlands – Leicester library is going to shut, and Corby council is planning around 40 job cuts. Further evidence of the local level reality of national pronouncements on ‘waste reduction’.

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Nicola Smith

Charlotte Gore has taken issue with a recent post I have written for Left Foot Forward. In her view:

• a cut of £290 million to the Future Jobs Fund does not constitute a loss of 94,000 jobs, and;
• there is no evidence to support the proposition that “demand-led employment schemes are the most effective means to prevent long-term unemployment when vacancies are limited.”

As I set out below – she is wrong.

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Join us from noon tomorrow on ToUChstone blog for live coverage of the budget, in association with Left Foot Forward, Liberal Conspiracy and other progressive bloggers.

And then throughout the afternoon, our team will be giving their specialist takes on the impact of the Chancellor’s announcements.

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