THE WEALTHY GAIN AGAIN
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I was surprised that Robert Maas in his Budget analysis {CMS-12 April) fell into the trap of missing the 'devil in the detail" or overlooking another Gordon Brown cunning stealth tax.
I refer to the changes in capital gains tax on the disposal of business assets.
Maas quite rightly points out that the tax has been reduced to 10% after four years, but has not mentioned that retirement relief is being phased out. Previously, it was about 2250,000 per individual per year.
This, perversely for a Labour government, hits the smallest businesses the hardest. The big winners are the wealthiest in society.
Under the old system, most of their gains would have been subject to 40% capital gains tax, whereas under the new system they will get away wtth paying only 10% if they qualify for full taper relief. A gain of £250,000 on the sale of a small one-man business is now subject to 10% capital gains tax, ie £25,000, with no retirement relief, whereas someone selling a larger business with a gain of 12m will pay 2110,000 less tax.
This is a cruel blow to small business people nearing retirement, such as my wife and myself. We have worked hard all our lives and by ploughing back every penny into the business have not been able to build up big pension funds.
We decided to wind the business down, aiming to retire at 50. The proceeds of the liquidisation of the firm should have provided us with our nest egg. The extra tax bill means we have had to re-think our plans.
Ironically, my decision to sell our fleet was prompted by the hostile tax environment towards road haulage, by both the Conservative and Labour governments!
PS: The double whammy is that our current profits fall into the range where the effective Corporation Tax rate has increased, even though Gordon Brown boasted of reducing small company tax rates! F William Ellis, Managing director, F W Ellis, Notts. I'm the wife of an international wagon driver who was stopped at Dover and found with immigrants on board. Does Jack Straw know what he's doing? He couldn't sort the problem himself so he's put the onus on drivers.
He visited Dover on 26 April where two drivers were stopped, one from Prague with eight, one from Spain with one. And what did ..lack Straw do? Shook the stowaway's hand. If that's not a message to immigrants that they're most welcome, I don't know what is.
If the immigrant is from Kosovo, what was he doing in a Spanish wagon?
So far 53 wagons have been stopped, 40 of them foreign. How is he going to execute the civil penalties on these drivers? They will go underground, so once again it's the British driver who's victimised.
Jack Straw has no right to slander the drivers with the name of racketeer. Does he really know of the hardship this legislation is causing to honest hard-working professional workers?
Would he like to work under the threat that at any time he could lose his home, family and dignity, and have a lifetime of paying fines, because the Government has given the world the impression that it's Utopia here?
It's just a pity his own son's action with drugs didn't cause him financial ruin. But that's a law for one and a different law for the other.