Andy Lindley sifts through last year's budget and details the consequences for you and your business. Andy Lindley is a retired analyst for the construction industry. This is quite a lengthy article, we advise you to click here and then print the article or read it offline. This is a classical pre-election Budget with several big jumps in expenditure concentrated to maximise political effect, only partly offset by many quiet tax increases and with economic policy distorted for electoral advantage. It is full of misrepresentations.
Major expenditure is presented as tax cuts.
Claimed inflation adjustments are consistently less than inflation for benefits and allowances exploiting fiscal drag but are consistently more for tax increases. There is a mass of measures, well over 100 in total, with the net effects in any sector often contrary to that claimed. Significant individual measures differ widely from the general claims for a sector. It is not clear that particular expenditure items are as given in the Budget Statement. They cannot be reconciled with the Departmental Expenditure Limits until the summer expenditure review.