Budget in Brief

Yes it is here! One of the most important days of the year! It’s Pancake Day!

Oh and it’s Budget Day. 

Ignoring the easy joke of Tynwald tossers we understand that at least 15 of you will be interested in what Dr Allinson has had to say.

So, to save us all some time, we’re predicting that 23 MHKs will vote in favour of the Budget, with Speaker Juan Watterson voting against, there is some potential for another to join El Juan but it won’t make a difference anyway. 

In LegCo, we’re going to go with an 8-0 whitewash.

Congrats to Dr Al on passing his Budget, any questions?

What’s In It?

Oh yeah, forgot that bit. So basically it goes like this:

• No changes to most people’s tax allowance, still £14,500 for single Pringles and £29,000 for jointly assessed couples
• For high earners, a new system mean that people earning over £100,000 (which includes some civil servants) will have their allowanced reduced by £1 for every £2 they earn over £100,000, or £200,000 for jointly assessed people. Following? No of course not, basically if you were £129,000 or £258,000 as a jointly assessed couple your personal allowance if zero.
• The first £600 of any general benefits in kind, provided to an employee by an employer, will be exempt from income tax, doesn’t include accommodation and associated expenses.
• National Insurance Holiday Scheme is raised from £4,000 to £4,5000 but to minimum salary which must be earned to qualify is now £23,000.
• The National Insurance thresholds and upper earnings limit will be increased by 5%.
• Triple lock is back, so pensioners are getting a 10.1% increase.

Benefits?

Never liked that worked, but yeah:

• Carers allowance is up 10.7%
• Attendance allowance up 9.8%
• Disability living allowance up 9.8% or 10.1% for higher rate mobility component
• Incoming support carer premier 17.1%
• Income support disability and disabled child premiums up 9.8%
• Nursing care contribution up 10.1%

Doing Much for Families?

Yeah, a bit:

• Maternity allowance, adoption allowance and paternity allowance up 16.8%
• Child benefit up 9.8%
• EPA, basic allowances and allowances for kids, up 9.8%

Spending?

Yeah there’s some, there’s the £100m Economic Strategy Fund, a five-year capital investment programme worth £442.4m, with £233.5m allocated to central gov schemes. Like you we can’t wait to see how high some of those budgets go.

Across that, it includes £2.3m for the Sexual Assault Referral Centre, £3.36m for the King Edward VIII Pier (that bloke from the Crown who decided not to be king) which is basically for the Manxman, £495,000 for mobile classrooms and £780,000 for the replacement of radiology equipment at Noble’s.

We also have £5.4m for the Climate Change Adaptation Fund, £6.125m for improvements to the roads and £1.155m for structural maintenance.

Also the Healthcare Transformation Fund will be topped up by a further £3.5m to support the recommendations of the Sir Jonathan Michael report, joy to the world.

How Are We Paying for This?

A good question, the cost is £1.2bn, or £15,243 for each of us, this includes DHSC getting an extra £20.5m in its budget, DESC gets £11.52m, DoI gets £4.66m, Home Affairs £2.16 and poor old DEFA gets just £2.03m

Well the secret ingredient to this spending is raiding the reserves (for £152.9m) to fill in the gap between what the gov brings in in taxes and from VAT receipts. Now this’t a new idea, but there is a plan to spend less of the rainy day fund, with the gov planning to grow its income from £1.2bn in 2023/24 to £1.43bn in 2027/78. This in turn should reduce the withdrawal from reserves from £152.9m to £3.5m in the same period.