The 2014 Budget: The Winners

by Tom Fuller




The Cabinet taking advantage of new cuts in beer and bingo duties
(source: web.orange.co.uk)

On the 20th of March, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced his most recent Budget review. Some of you may have read news articles or seen reports on the Budget and who it has affected. But how does it affect you and your family?

Here is a short summary of the 5 biggest winners resulting from the recent budget:
 

1) Anyone earning less than £100,000 per year. The tax-free allowance and the 40% tax bracket have increased slightly: to £10,500 and £41,865 respectively. This means that your parents or older siblings are likely to have more disposable income as they will be paying marginally less tax

2) Beer, Cider and Whisky drinkers (more likely to affect you). The duty on beer has been cut by 1p, with the duty on cider and whisky being frozen (possibly to please the Scots before the referendum?) This will mean your favourite pint of lager on a Saturday night out is 0.3% cheaper. 

3) Pensioners. After the biggest shake up of pensions since they were brought in, the necessity to have an annuity has been scrapped, which means pensioners have more access to their money. Also a new savings bond giving 4% interest for the over 65s will be started soon.

4) Bingo players. Probably not that relevant to any of you, but the rate of duty on bingo has been halved from 20% to 10%. This is due to the rapid decline in the number of bingo halls in recent years.

5) Finally, firms that export or invest. To try to boost GDP growth, £1.5 billion has been given to the UK exports finance scheme and the corporate investment allowance has been doubled to £500,000. This is likely to cause AD to increase.

There have been various other measures put into place, like the introduction of a new Pound coin, a boost in the budget for flood defences and pothole repairs, as well as an increase in the amount of cash that can be put into an ISA.

 

Although not all of these policies will affect you, they are likely to affect people you know. Overall, it seems to be a great move by Osborne in controlling the economy and should be beneficial to many people (in particular alcoholic Scottish whisky exporters, who like bingo and are earning less than £100,000 per year). 

See Christopher-James de Wilde's article, 2014 Budget: The Flaws