What might the Budget hold?

[DimPrawn]

Budget predictions 2013: What to expect - Telegraph

Savers have been hit hard by recent Budgets, with the annual pension allowance slashed from £255,000 to £40,000 and the lifetime pension allowance – the total size your pension can grow to – cut from £1.5m to £1.25m.

There is speculation this year that the Budget could further reduce the annual pension allowance to £30,000 and – more radically – cap the tax-free lump sum that savers are entitled to receive when they take out their pension.

Pension savings are an "easy target" for governments looking to find cash in tough times, according to Raj Mody, head of pensions at PwC, the accountancy firm.

I think anyone putting money into a pension that isn't going to retire in the next few years is asking for trouble. I can see the tax free lump sum aspect being removed (seen as "not fair" to get without tax) and instead pensions being forced to buy government debt instead with promise of increased state pension in return - effectively govt theft backed by tax payers promise.

[CoolCat]

What will the budget hold?

Err cheap uncapped work visas for outsourcers to flood the market with Indian nationals in skills already in oversupply…

Support for tax avoidance of companies like Cognizant, Tata, Infosys and so on to pay their corporate taxes in tax havens rather than here…

First year in the country free of employers and employees national insurance for all Indian nationals working here…

Extensive tax dispensations allowing Indian nationals in the country to claim a large percentage of their earnings as “expenses” and therefore without tax in ways which Brits working away from home within the UK cannot…

Free healthcare to work visa holders and their family from countries which provide nothing of the sort to Brits in their countries, especially attractive to folk with pre existing serious conditions needing expensive treatment that we will attract in disproportionate numbers…

Free state school places for the children of work visa holders from countries which provide nothing of the sort to Brits in their countries…

Support for theft of British intellectual property and moving it to India on an industrial scale to be used to undercut this country on world markets…

Lack of policing of the rules on visas, tax, data protection, employment, as they apply to the Indian outsourcers allowing them to disregard them in all practical ways…

Continued support for paying “aid” to India a country with a nuclear weapons programme, a space programme, air craft carriers and all the rest of it and which is perfectly able to borrow the money (as we are) on world markets as we do, and where its own elite prefer to spend its money on space programme et al while letting its citizens starve to death…

Pretty much the status quo then…

[The Spartan]

I agree I think pensions will be in for a right in years to come, they're a source of easy income for the government as we've previously seen when Brown raided them

[DimPrawn]

What will the budget hold?

Err cheap uncapped work visas for outsourcers to flood the market with Indian nationals in skills already in oversupply…

Support for tax avoidance of companies like Cognizant, Tata, Infosys and so on to pay their corporate taxes in tax havens rather than here…

First year in the country free of employers and employees national insurance for all Indian nationals working here…

Extensive tax dispensations allowing Indian nationals in the country to claim a large percentage of their earnings as “expenses” and therefore without tax in ways which Brits working away from home within the UK cannot…

Free healthcare to work visa holders and their family from countries which provide nothing of the sort to Brits in their countries, especially attractive to folk with pre existing serious conditions needing expensive treatment that we will attract in disproportionate numbers…

Free state school places for the children of work visa holders from countries which provide nothing of the sort to Brits in their countries…

Support for theft of British intellectual property and moving it to India on an industrial scale to be used to undercut this country on world markets…

Lack of policing of the rules on visas, tax, data protection, employment, as they apply to the Indian outsourcers allowing them to disregard them in all practical ways…

Continued support for paying “aid” to India a country with a nuclear weapons programme, a space programme, air craft carriers and all the rest of it and which is perfectly able to borrow the money (as we are) on world markets as we do, and where its own elite prefer to spend its money on space programme et al while letting its citizens starve to death…

Pretty much the status quo then…

All that is going to cost a lot of money........I know! Let's pinch the private sector pension pots!

[The Spartan]

And they're compulsory now.

Neat trick.

I'm sure you can opt out though

[sasguru]

It doesn't matter what the budget holds - nothing will fix the root of the problem: the UK does not produce enough goods and/or services to pay its way in the world.
This can be seen by looking at the data: usually when a currency has been devalued, as has sterling, exports rise. This happened for, e.g. South Korea after their 1998 crisis. Their exports rose 15% helping them out of the crisis. By contrast the UK's exports fell 8% after devaluation.
We have been running a trade and balance of payments deficit since 1998.
There is a deep rooted structural problem here which cannot be fixed by "budgets"

[eek]

It doesn't matter what the budget holds - nothing will fix the root of the problem: the UK does not produce enough goods and/or services to pay its way in the world.
This can be seen by looking at the data: usually when a currency has been devalued, as has sterling, exports rise. This happened for, e.g. South Korea after their 1998 crisis. Their exports rose 15% helping them out of the crisis. By contrast the UK's exports fell 8% after devaluation.
We have been running a trade and balance of payments deficit since 1998.
There is a deep rooted structural problem here which cannot be fixed by "budgets"

Is it seriously only since 1998 that we've run a trade deficit? I remember talking about such things in the late 1980's.

There was an argument even then that we (and possibly Switzerland) are the only service based economies in the world due to our banking and insurance companies.

[cojak]

It doesn't matter what the budget holds - nothing will fix the root of the problem: the UK does not produce enough goods and/or services to pay its way in the world.
This can be seen by looking at the data: usually when a currency has been devalued, as has sterling, exports rise. This happened for, e.g. South Korea after their 1998 crisis. Their exports rose 15% helping them out of the crisis. By contrast the UK's exports fell 8% after devaluation.
We have been running a trade and balance of payments deficit since 1998.
There is a deep rooted structural problem here which cannot be fixed by "budgets"

WSGS

I'm now off for a lie down...

[Sysman]

Is it seriously only since 1998 that we've run a trade deficit? I remember talking about such things in the late 1980's.

There was an argument even then that we (and possibly Switzerland) are the only service based economies in the world due to our banking and insurance companies.

But Switzerland still has a fair bit of high tech engineering.

[DodgyAgent]

We are more like japan:

Our economic strategy is heading in the Japanese direction - Telegraph