Archive for March, 2010

Did Alistair Darling outfox David Cameron?

Those who follow the political press will be well aware that the Conservative party has been highlighting a number of tax rises which will hit the UK in the 2010/11 tax year although on the whole there has been very little to complain about regarding the latest UK budget. So why is this? The truth is that Alistair Darling has again “stolen” a number of Conservative party policies and introduced them into his last budget. The Conservative party was very keen to introduce a stamp duty holiday on property purchases, which Alistair Darling copied, the Conservative party was very keen to introduce more University places, which Alistair Darling replicated, and there were other changes such as inheritance tax which would appear to have been lifted directly from the Conservative party policy handbook. As a consequence, the number of changes announced in this years budget which David Cameron can legitimately target and criticise are very small in number. However, many believe that David Cameron’s best plan of attack is to highlight changes which will hit the UK economy from 6 April onwards which were brought in at the previous budget. It is believed that UK businesses and taxpayers will be hit to the tune of £20 billion a year due to changes which will come in during the next tax year.