Happy new year!
As another April 6th flies past more people are slowly waking up to the fact that Gordon Brown pulled a fast one on small companies in last month's budget. Big business gets a 2p cut in corporation tax. Small business gets a 3p rise in corporation tax. How's that meant to work?
I've been wondering why so many people missed it. David Cameron has been taunting Tony Blair about 'not seeming to realise that there were two types of corporation tax'. I get the distinct impression that he didn't realise either until one of his less well-off lackeys pointed it out some time in the week between the Budget and the next PMQs.
I'll admit it's a bit of a pain updating all our training materials following each Budget, but one of the pleasurable side effects for a news junkie like me is comparing the coverage in all the papers the day after.
Almost all talked about the 'abolition' of the starting rate of income tax - a phrase that the Treasury uses. Now in my version of English abolishing a tax is a thing to be celebrated. But in Treasury-speak abolishing the starting rate actually means turning it into the standard rate. This means doubling it - from 10% to 20%.
None of the broadsheets pointed this out in ways that you or I would understand. Which was the only paper to nail it? Step forward the Sun. And to prove it here's the clever - and remarkably simple - graphic they used.
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