Consumers told to take stock following tax changes
Consumers should take stock of their tax burden following a mixed bag from new chancellor Alistair Darling.That is the message from a senior tax partner at Grant Thornton, Mike Warburton, who says that the cumulative effect of the Budget is to add £1.8 billion to the collective wallet.Mr Warburton told BBC Radio 5 Live's Wake Up To Money that while overall the Budget was "neutral", it was important consumers checked the fine print."The thing that gets confusing is we’ve got the changes announced in this Budget but we’ve also got the changes that were announced 12 months ago, so we’ve got basic rate tax coming down to 20 per cent - and people on low incomes, the ten per cent band has gone," he explained."We already knew that was going to happen, but people forget about it; so I think there’s going to be quite a lot of people on low incomes who are going to feel worse off when they get their pay packet, even though on yesterday’s speech you wouldn’t have thought that was going to happen."Taking into account the fuel tax and other changes, Mr Warburton's advice was for consumers to keep an eye on their finances, because the likelihood was "over the next two years people are going to be, by and large, worse off".
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