Income Tax 2008

Well there I was saying how I couldn't be bothered working out the effects of the Budget and then I just go and create a simple spreadsheet to plot the basic changes in Income Tax.
From £6,000 to £200,000 a year this is the percentage change in the amount of base income tax from 2007/8 to 2008/9.

[I'll put me teeth in and explain that a little better, this is the percentage difference between gross pay minus income tax from last year to this year]

That's with no benefits, under 65, single, etc. just the base rate. So anyone earning under £16,500 a year will be losing money. ASHE puts the 2007 median pay at £19,943 that's 50% of the population on either side of that figure.

Breaking that down further into percentages we reach £16,797 at 40%. This means that in pure income tax terms the bottom 40% of this country will be handing more money over to the government; it gets better.

Taking the values for each of the percentage breakdowns values ranging from £6,192 through to £42,902 1 person per section earning the amount given gives a loss of £1,336.76.

Okay perhaps a little unfair as I'm included part-timers so I'll turn to full-time only.

Median pay: £24,002, 25% at £17,040 so only around 25% of full-timers are losing out. Loss to the government £1,903.06.

Either way you look at it in pure income tax terms the people at the bottom are going to be earning less and the people at the top more. Make of that what you will.