Partner Article

2014 – the year of the DIY Budget

Chancellors of the Exchequer like to give names to their Budgets. Names such as ‘A Budget for Jobs’, ‘A Budget for Recovery’, ‘A Budget to Help Us Get Re-elected’ - you know the sort of thing.

So we were interested to see last week’s announcement that the Government is to consult with the public as to what they’d like to see in Budget 2014, which will take place on 19 March. Anything that politicians can do to genuinely engage with people is good, so 2014 could well see ‘The DIY Budget’.

This got us thinking about what people would like to see in George Osborne’s Red Box this year.

Earlier this week, Baker Tilly carried out a survey asking this very question and, of the 293 people who responded, it was no real surprise that the highest number - 35% - said that they wanted to see action to make multinational corporations pay a fair amount of tax in the UK.

Nearly a quarter of the people surveyed (23%) said they would like a reduction in Employers’ National Insurance which, in turn, would create more employment opportunities. This was followed by tackling offshore evaders at 22%, and a reduction of VAT in restaurants and for tourist attractions at 15%.

Surprisingly, the smallest number of respondents (6%) said they wanted the 50p rate of income tax reinstated for high earners. This is interesting as Ed Miliband has suggested that this issue could be on the agenda if Labour gets back into power.

So if the results of this survey are to be believed, they beg the question – who’s really listening to the public?

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by George Bull .