March 22 in Blackpool
As is always the case with Gordon Brown’s budgets the devil is in the detail, so here’s some of what we missed yesterday:
- Anyone earning £5-15,000 pounds a year will now have to pay tax at 20p in the pound rather than just 10p;
- Gaming duty in casinos will go up to 50% for big casinos, and from 2.5% to 15% for smaller casinos – bad news for the casinos we still have in Blackpool.
- Corporation tax for Blackpool’s many small business will rise from 20p to 22p in the pound by 2009 – just what we don’t need to keep the resort going.
- And in a little-noticed review on local government finance published on the morning of the budget by the Treasury – can’t think why, can you? – the idea of a ‘bed tax’ that would add £100 to the cost of a family holiday was refloated. Yet another thing that is ‘bad for Blackpool’.
Little joy for Blackpool, then, even in the small print.
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March 22nd, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Another loss to the fine print was the decision to freeze defence spending. Yes, I know, he announced an increase of £400m, but if you look at the numbers, the defence budget for 2007/08 is £40.8bn – the same as the estimated outturn for 06/07. (Detailed arithmetic plus link to Treasury figs here.)
In real terms, that amounts to a cut of £816m. What a nice present for all those troops he wants to lead.