Moneybox Live

I just had a quick trawl through the budget details: more tax for those on £150,000 is good, though I'm not sure how much it will raise. Pensions up, state redundancy allowances up, ISA allowances up - all good. Support for 'scrappage' and CCS - nonsense designed to keep the car manufacturers and power generators happy. Darling's figures depend on a sharp and fast recovery though, and it's not clear where he finds the justification for that. I guess if the £ stays weak and other countries recover quickly, exports will help - but that's a big 'if'.

The tax rise for the very rich is a decade overdue - but these people can afford tax lawyers to help them evade it as usual. The obvious dodge is to arrange their pay as capital gains - taxed at 15% I think. This is what the hedge fund traders did when the rate was 10% - thus paying far less tax proportionately than their cleaners, while not benefiting the country at all.