2011 Budget: reaction interviews

2011 Budget: reaction interviews; Jason Witcombe (Chancellor of Finicial Planner) interview SOT For me there are two main headlines, the measures to encorurage entrepenurial spirit by increasing entrepreneur relief for people who set up businesses and then sell them and also the measures on charitable donations. Couple of measures - extending the gift aid regime and also encouraging people to leave part of their wealth on death to charity and give them a reduction in inheritance tax for doing so It falls in with notion of Big Society. There were measures on clamping down on people avoiding tax - clearly, avoiding taxes is unacceptable but the reason people do it is because they don't want to pay it, but if they could be encoruaged to give a chunk of their income to charities they support - those might be the charities that, if the money wasn't with the charities, the government wouldn't be funding it anyway. It's clever measure to encourage Big Society approach As with all Budgets, there's a lot of giving, lot of taking - ultimately probably more taking than giving. If the interest rates go up a bit, and you've got a mortgage, any savings you might have got from Budget will be eaten away in mortgage costs. Important for people to look at their own finances at what has been saved but look at risks for future Are a few changes we didn't know about. Things like tax allowances for next year we already knew. Increase in personal allowance for 2012-13 to just over 8,000 pounds - that's new and is to be welcomed. Over real long term we need to create jobs. One way to create jobs is to encourage people to start their own businesses - tax breaks announced today will encourage people. Long term is't pretty positive budget.