Rottweilers on Speed Tax

For a former Accountancy Age journalist I have been reprehensibly slow to catch up with the finer detail of the Budget. I must amend my post on the day, which said that one of the three main features of the Budget was a good thing. It turns out that George Osborne managed to score a perfect three out of three stinkers.

I thought the granny tax – the freeze on age-related allowances until they are brought into line with the higher personal allowance for everyone – was sharing the burden of balancing the books with better-off pensioners, who had got off quite lightly so far.

I overlooked an important detail. Age-related allowances – the extra personal allowance for old people – are already phased out on incomes over £24,000 a year. The granny tax is therefore a squeeze on lower-middle-income old people, and Osborne is rightly denounced in all corners of the land as not just an ideological Tory (the 50p rate cut) and a pawn of the Liberal Democrats (the inefficient and inequitable rise in the general personal allowance) but an incompetent buffoon, who did not spot the presentational disaster of the minor but unnecessary and unfair tax on Middle England’s rottweilers on speed.*

*”Your average Rottweiler on speed can be a lot more amiable than a pensioner wronged.” Tony Blair, A Journey.

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• TheOnlyWayIsNorfolk

  Buy rottweiler. Set it on plod on Newham. Happy days.

• http://shroudofturinwithoutallthehype.wordpress.com/ Colin Berry

  What I find especially reprehensible about the so-called Granny tax is the way it purposely uses fiscal drag, i.e. failure to uprate allowances in line with inflation, as a means  of quickly removing the present differentials. Does the man not realize that pensioners’ worst fears are inflation – yet here is a Chancellor using inflation – most of which is currently Treasury-made- as a tool of fiscal policy. 

• TheOnlyWayIsNorfolk

  Same Colin that unmasked Haslam? Welcome aboard, it is far more right wing here (the Indy not just J bird) than it used to be. Broxted banned, Rehill on the run;)

• James_Hanniker

  As a former Accountancy Age reader, I too no longer have to swot up so hard on budget minutiae, and I must admit I missed this. Thanks for pointing it out. It shouldn’t really be among the minutiae though and I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about it. I’m sure Mr Osborne can live with the ‘granny tax’ epithet given the unmerited connotations of across-the-boardness it bestows upon his action.