Was it all smoke and mirrors?  Karen Bradley, Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman for Staffordshire Moorlands analyses Gordon Brown’s latest Budget.

Last Wednesday saw Gordon Brown deliver his eleventh and, presumably, final Budget speech. For a Chancellor more usually associated with stealth, it ended for once, with some drama in the House as he claimed to cut a tax.  But as we now know, all is not what it seems.

As a tax accountant, I am always very interested in what the Chancellor has to say, not only in the Budget headlines but also in the small print too.  So, having digested the detail, what does the Budget do for those of us living in Staffordshire Moorlands?

What the Chancellor appears to have given with one hand, he is taking away with the other – so the Budget is tax neutral overall. Some people will benefit from the 2p cut in income tax, but others will see their take-home pay fall because he has abolished the 10% starting rate. This means the tax rate for people on the lowest incomes has been doubled. Some companies, mainly large financial services businesses that have low levels of investment in machinery or factories, will see their tax burden fall. Smaller companies, particularly small manufacturers will pay significantly more in tax because their allowances have been removed and their tax rate increased.

But it is not all bad. The Chancellor is right to try and simplify some tax rules by, for example, aligning the levels at which different rates of income tax and national insurance apply, but this was definitely not a simple Budget. There are 81 Budget Notes, amounting to 190 pages of important detail – and this is before we see the Finance Bill next week.  It’s difficult to see how anyone can honestly call this simple.

I am concerned about the uncertainty that this Budget creates. For example, businesses investing in machinery now know that the Chancellor wants to take an extra £1.5 billion from them next year.  But they don’t know how or when he plans to do it. That makes it really difficult to plan for the future.

While there are some things to welcome it’s a shame that the Chancellor has missed another opportunity to shed his reputation for stealth taxes.  Instead, it is a complex Budget.  I would have liked to see simple measures that share the benefits of growth fairly and reward hard work.