Monday 12 March 2012

What would you do with £60 a month?

This is a cross-post from Lib Dem Gains.


This is another post about the Liberal Democrats push to increase the Personal Allowance towards (and beyond) £10,000. I make no apologies for that, although I do promise to focus on other things in future posts.

I mentioned in this post about Caron Lindsay's idea that we should relate the figures of tax saved to real-life examples of what this money could be spent on. It appears that Caron's wise words have been listened to by the party as members got an e-mail from Party President, Tim Farron on Friday.

In it he discussed this issue and launched a website encouraging people to think about how they would spend an extra £60 a month. (This represents* the basic rate tax saved by increasing the Annual Allowance from £6,475 when the coalition took power - which was unchanged from previous year - to £10,000.)

So what are you doing with the £16.67 you're already saving in income tax each month? What would you do with an additional £43.33?

For myself, it'd make things a bit more comfortable while I pay down debt and save for a trip to Australia. I appreciate, though, that that isn't going to help with an economic stimulus, so I shall also purchase new clothes, which are even more desperately needed now I've lost over a stone in weight!

You can respond here and say what you would do? Note that the website asks for an e-mail address which is, presumably, for authentication purposes but may also lead to you being added to a mailing list.

Once you've completed the form, the site will also give you information about the impact of the policy locally. In Bristol, 16,200 people will be taken out of Income Tax altogether.

Andrew

*Pedants note - the actual figure before rounding is £58.75.

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