Budget 2009 - Have Your Say

It's in Cameron's best interests to put a spin on it and call it the deepest downturn since WW2 - just because he says it, doesn't mean it's true. I'm looking forward to a positive budget and expect the doom mongers to be silenced. The debt is long term, so the savings need only be relatively slight from budget to budget.

The PM came under fierce attack in the pre-budget Question Time period. It will be interesting to see how the government provides the incentives that industry needs.

Early poll results on who might benefit showed that people think manufacturing industry will fare worst of all. This is something government needs to address. How? We'll see as the speech unfolds.

To be honest I don't see how the budget can provide us with anything but gloom. If the govt genuinely have blown £200 billion on the bank bailout, how can they not take from every single area the budget affects? It all makes your head spin. This £200 billion that's apparently gone - where has it gone to? Someone's got it and it's obviously not us! I think the best Darling can do is appease the common man so as to avoid a full scale revolution!

@Quebert: We're now told £175bn...still a staggering amount

Interesting article about the Conservatives paying for google ads to direct internet users searching for budget news by keyword to their own site where they'll attempt to debunk the budget and regurgitate it with their own spin:

http://tiny.cc/QbghK

Quite innovative, but will anyone conclude that they could do better?

@ Dennis - yeah, still a massive amount. Others might not share this view, but I honestly believe this has been the largest organised daylight robbery in the history of mankind.

@Quebert: hard to argue against. The devil will be in the detail so how confident do you feel about business being able to succeed even with all the incentives?

Well, it looks like I was partly right and partly wrong. It is the deepest downturn since WW2 but it wasn't that bad after all, imho. It's about time high earners paid more and the bankers that got us into this will no doubt be amongst those in the higher tax band. I'm quite pleased with it all.

@steve - have you done calculations to see how different earnings bands might be affected?

What's this? The ICAEW with Twitter feeds and open forums? Blimey, the execs will be getting a nosebleed worrying about what this all means for luddites. Well done on it all, anyway - a brave step into the real world :) I agree with SteveDunn, I think it's all been pretty reasonable. I do like the car scrap scheme. It's worked well in other countries and £2000 is no small sum.

What do people feel about the doubled rate of writing down allowance? Was 25%, then 20% and now up to 40%. Will it make businesses bring forward investment?And with the £50,000 AIA, surely it won't make much difference to smaller businesses?

I am not sure that this is on message but if I was chancellor I would not have given the banks the majority of the money that has been used to prop them up. I would have bailed them out to a point because it would not have been good for banks to go bust. I would have given every person in the UK at least £100,000 with the proviso/contract (or just paid it off directly) that they paid off their mortgage and/or bought a new house and a new car for the family, an eco friendly one at that. This would have bailed out every sector of the economy. The banks to my mind, were never going to pass any of the "help" on How would we pay it back, a 1p on income tax perhaps, or as the current government's thinking, we will worry about that another day.....

I don't know if you spotted (!), but hidden away on page 133 of the Budget Report is the sentence, "Budget 2009 sets the world’s first carbon budgets, as required by the new Climate Change Act. These set a legally binding 34 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020, a new level of ambition for UK climate policy". This puts a stake in the ground for reporting for UK organisations and we will see greater requirements up to 2012 (with possible requirements specified in the Companies Act).

@Richard: one wag has already said: Crafty And Really Bad Overstatement of Numbers on the 'Carbon' claim.

@Dennis: I did wonder about the '£50bn of low-carbon investment' over the next spending review! 

Has anybody else spotted this section of yesterday's budget 

"A.161 Legislation will be introduced requiring senior accounting officers of major corporates to certify personally that adequate controls to prepare accurate tax computations are in place. This will have effect on returns due to be made for accounting reference periods beginning on or after Royal Assent to Finance Bill 2009. (58)"

Worryingly the forecasts suggest that Treasury expects to collect £40m in 10/11 and £50m in 11/12 from this piece of legislation. 

Time to check the D&O insurance!