A tough one to get a head around, I remember the good old days when Chancellors gave a few £billion here, took a few £billion there, but netted out as roughly neutral. What is the annual budget deficit down to now, a £100 billion overspend, yet so many people still needing help as we emerge from the biggest recession for 80-odd years.
In 1997 the Housing Stamp Tax was a flat 1%, I’d agree that there will be help for family homes up to say £250k, but as we now have decent housing transaction traction, I think this could/should wait until next year, in case the market stalls on higher interest rates - and those that need to sell, are having trouble encouraging buyers. We still desperately need to build more homes, but I can’t see what else he could do in a new budget to increase the current build rate, other than financially encourage local authority and/or social homes associations to break ground.
The £10k start rate for tax target I think is already ‘baked in’ a previous budget for this April, so probably too early for more graduated rises, over the next few years.
There have been so many measures from 2010 and yet to fully feed through into the economy, I wouldn’t be surprised if due to still sizable annual spending deficit, there wasn’t any bum grabbing headline policies next week - finger crossed though.