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The Budget 2009 - any effect on the legal market?

Budget is out again, and lots of things relevant to lawyers and law firms:

Most important first.....
CIGARETTES, ALCOHOL AND FUEL
• Alcohol taxes to go up 2% from midnight - putting the price of the average pint up 1p (arrghhh).

CAR SCRAPPAGE SCHEME (does this mean someone could start buying up 10 years old cars and sell them on at a profit? Anyone using this idea, please ensure you pay me a fair commission!)
• From next month until March 2010 motorists to get £2,000 discount on new cars if they trade in cars older than 10 years
• The government will provide £1,000 with the industry expected to provide the other half
TAX
• Income tax for those earning more than £150,000 to rise to 50% from April 2010
• Tax relief on pensions to be reduced for people on more than £150,000 a year from April 2011

UK ECONOMY
• Growth expected to pick up in 2010, expanding by 1.25%.
• Economy to grow by 3.5% annually from 2011

JOBS AND TRAINING
• All long-term unemployed under 25s to be offered job or training (May become relevant for conveyancers?)

HOUSING
• Scheme to guarantee mortgage backed securities to boost lending
• Stamp duty holiday for homes up to £175,000 to be extended to end of year
• Extra £80m for shared equity mortgage scheme
• £500m to kickstart stalled housing projects - including £100m for local authorities to build energy efficient homes

Not sure what difference much of this will make to the current state of the market - the mortgage market needs a big kick and cant see much of one here...

HELP FOR BUSINESS
• Help for loss-making companies extended - they will be able to reclaim more taxes paid in the last three years until November 2010
• Businesses' main capital allowance rate doubled to 40%

PENSIONERS
• Grandparents of working age who care for their grandchildren will see that work count towards their entitlement for the basic state pension.

We have looked at this before - it used to be that the grandparents had to be registered with social services, but the only way to get registered was to look after other children from different families which of course most grandparents do not do.

Hard to say what difference the budget will have to law firms - I suspect nothing much will make a difference until people get back into the habit of purchasing houses again...

Jonathan Fagan, http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/
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Comments

Zac said…
Most of these measures are positive but also unrealistic, for instance how can the government guarantee all unemployed under 25s a job or training? it seems a good target but is it feasable?
23 April 2009 at 10:33
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