Off to watch coverage of yet another budget, to see how much the govt wants to take off me this time! It's getting so that our tax system, PAYE (Pay As You Earn) is more like Pay ALL You Earn! Ho ho bloody ho! I hope those bankers and speculators have a really **** Christmas, though I don't for one second imagine they will...

It seems to me that the only people that have taken a real hit over the last few years, tax-wise, are the high earners. The near-50% tax will have more impact on those it applies to than any changes will for the rest of us. The Personal Allowance was static for two years but went up this year and I really don't think we're all that worse off.

You're talking about England/Britain, right? Cos over here in Ireland we've been flattened. Reductions in child benefit, a property tax, evrything going up...

This is our sixth "austerity budget", and though I personally am very lucky in that I have no kids/don't drink/smoke/have a car/job/own my house, and so will be very minimally affected, I'd hate to be someone with a family and a mortgage in these already incredibly hard times! Quite savage all round really.

Crap, I was wrong! They cut the Carers' Respite Grant, which is paid once per year, from 1700 Euro to 1350 Euro. Bastards! I rely on that money in the middle of the year! :mad:

You realise high earner taxes have actually gone down, right? I know it's an unbelievable fact in a climate like this but it's true somehow.

Currently the higher rate of tax is 40% on earnings up to £150,000 and the additional rate of 50% tax on anything over that amount. This was only introduced over the last few years. I'm fairly certain there was no additional rate of 50% before, say, 09/10. Could be slightly earlier than that.

EDIT:

I was talking about the UK, yeah. Not Ireland. I also wasnt talking about cuts in public funding and state benefits, which I can imagine are being cut heavily. I was talking about someone like myself who doesn't have any benefits and just has one source of income, which is a salary taxed via PAYE. Someone in my circumstances isnt really much worse off than a few years ago, it doesnt seem. The increase in Personal Allowances may or may not be exactly proportionate with any budget increases, I don't know, but I cant imagine any difference is huge.

Unlike me who drinks, smokes and owns a car. The car tax is a big one but luckily my insurance at the moment isn't too bad. To be honest I don't think I'll plan on owning a house for a long time, rent seems to be the way to go for me.

Thanks to the wisdom of the wonderful Mr Osbourne that 50% tax has gone down. The only taxation in this country to actually go down, funnily enough. You'd almost think those affected were in need of all the money they could find or something instead of being loaded beyond most people's wildest dreams.

In a shellnut, today I woke up to find that after dying down a bit yesterday my cold has returned with force. Feeling not quite ready for anything I dragged myself to school anyway, where I was tasked with playing a KKK member in History because why not. It was also the last parents' evening of my life tonight and I got great reviews from all my teachers, which is surprising considering my tendency to tactically avoid some of their lessons and conveniently misplace their homework.

I'd imagine the white hood would have made for a convenient place blow your nose.

I turn 20 in ten days :) **** yeahh