Q&A: "What does the Budget mean for me?" - CLOSED

[AntoniaMumsnet]

Foxed by tax credits? Baffled by benefits? As the financial experts grind through the detail of the Chancellor's budget, we have assembled a panel of gurus to help you work out what it means for you. They may not be able to cure your financial ills, but they'll help with a diagnosis.

The panel includes Sue Royston, a senior policy officer at Citizens Advice and Clare Francis, head of content at MoneySupermarket. Our budget webchat guest, Mark Dampier is on hand, too.

Post your questions by Monday 26 March, and we'll post the answers in the beginning of April.

Is the disability element of child tax credits going or not? DS2 gets middle rate care DLA

Mr Anchovy, many thanks for your answer on salary sacrifice which I was wondering about.

Can you answer a question about company cars? At the moment you are taxed on the value of the benefit. Does the amount of benefit as calculated count as salary for CB purposes?

Many thanks for your time on this thread.

Does the amount of benefit as calculated count as salary for CB purposes?

Yes. It's basically everything on your P60, everything on a P11D, all income from savings, land and investments and all profits from self-employment, less losses from self-employment (but not from land i.e. losses on rented property).

There is a guide here, although note that the legislation for this has yet to be drafted so they may decide to stray away from Adjusted Net Income: personally I doubt it though; this figure is already calculated by HMRC's system so using it reduces the time/cost/inevitable cock-up associated with the change.

MrAnchovy Great, thanks for that and the link.

Thank you all for sending your questions. We will be sending them out to a panel of experts, sadly not including Mumsnetter Mr Anchovy
Look out for their answers next week.....

I'm glad the experts didn't disagree with anything I said - although Will Howden missed the point in his answer to purpleroses that her DP would have to contribute at least as much as the CB (not just some of it) to the upkeep of his children to claim the CB.

Also when Danny Cox talked about making additional pension contributions in his answer to Goingtoofast, he only mentioned salary sacrifice contributions. Although this is a very efficient way of making voluntary pension contributions, this is only usually possible for people on modern 'flexible benefit' packages. The good news for those in more traditional pension schemes is that any payment to a qualifying pension scheme can be used to reduce your Net Income for CB clawback purposes - so if you can make AVCs to your employer's pension, or take out a separate personal or stakeholder pension plan, that will normally work too.