It's what HMRC and Vodafone are trying to sell us too

paulzolo got in before the edit there.

Many of us are lucky- through hard work, good fortune, or whatever of still having jobs. Many don't. I will be taking a pay cut in the new financial year due to a new system of paying unsocial hours. It's a git, but there you go, I still have a job.

Yes, as my wife and I were saying only yesterday, we are doing OK, and don't have to worry about money too much, but I actually don't mind paying taxes, IF and I mean IF, they are genuinely useful.

When taxes are being taken to fuel bureaucracy, then yes, I do object but if this government is going to raise taxes, cut expenditure (some of it useful, some of it useless) to turn this country around, then good luck to them.

If they are going to use our money to fund a fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe to look at runaway inflation, then I hope Mugabe has them up against a wall for a firing squad.

And it will be that special kind of wording used which is faintly ambiguous just in case a few angry chickens come home to roost and a U turn is needed.

I don't know about you, but when those in power (viz The Cabinet) are pretty much all millionaires and need not work to lead a comfortable life, tell the rest of us that "we're all in it together" and that jobs are on the line (euphemistically defined as "waste"), it all rings rather hollow.

I am not convinced that they have the country's interests at heart. I believe that they are doing what Tories always do - help their rich friends get richer no matter what the cost is.

Answer to a is no and be is yes. As to when there will be another problem and I will probably be a Cassandra but it will be soon enough.

Personally am I bothered by it. No. I am going to be saving a lot more from now on so will not impact my purchases anywhere near as much in the past. Secondly companies will find that retail sales will be much tougher from now on and so I suspect that price cuts will overall be greater than the VAT increase.

I suspect it's even higher

As above, fuel and utilties bills is where it will hurt, so will have to cut back on everything.

I wonder if food/supermarket goods will become cheaper? With everyone paying more for their fuel, they'll have less to spend at the supermarket, that doesn't bode well for supermarkets or their suppliers...

Electricity, gas, petrol, and diesel all have the benefit that we need them, almost no matter what the price. One can, however, buy low-cost own brand toilet roll, substitute bread for rice, and make a good many processed foods by oneself...

Hey all.

Yes I'm bothered. Asides from costs going up (and no, it doesn't mean an extra £2.50 on £100 as that £100 already includes 17.5% tax like many people seem to think it does) it's going to bump up fuel costs which, handly, were raised with fuel duty a couple of days before the tax increase. Handy. According to the economists a 2.5% actual increase in the tax is actually a rise in VAT of 14%.

Not only will that have an immediate effect on personal fuel costs it'll also increase the cost of buying items as transport costs will increase.

I can't follow the logic, spending will be affected, inflation will rise and interest rates will follow. With people having less to spend and jobs being lost this year how will it encourage people to spend and keep the economy going?

A sluggish economy generally means a weaker currency, that will effectively make buying oil more expensive that will further increase fuel prices. I guess we could all use trains instead, oh hang on....

Loopholes, bankers and chasing up that £100billion+ of unpaid taxes would be my first course of action instead but what do I and my basic knowledge of economics know?

Still a lot more than our Chancellor.

Utilities are charged at 5% VAT

HSBC has not (yet) moved its head office off shore. As for the other companies how do you stop them. They still pay tax on their UK earnings just not tax on their global profits.

SWMBO used to work for Wolesley – a plumbing and building distribution Co. Now they own companies all over the world with less than 20% of their turnover coming form the UK. They were UK registered but at the end of the year they re-regisitered the Co in Switzerland. They estimate that the lower tax will save them around £30 million p.a. in tax. They will still pay UK tax on the UK business just not any tax on the group profits earned overseas

The question is how do you stop Co moving their international HO overseas

Thanks for the correction on HSBC. I was in rant mode, which is never a good one as far as my accuracy is concerned.

Good points all. I think the general point the government is wilfully ignoring is that if they spent a bit of time and money chasing down tax dodgers instead of piling more misery on the rest of us, it would help enormously. I watched Gideon Osborne answering questions on BBC News earlier, and he literally was like a stuck record - "tough but necessary", "more progressive than increasing income tax or national insurance", etc, etc, blah-blah-blah I'm not listening, blah-blah - three times in a row.

I really hope this year gets horribly messy for the government. I hope this year sees the coalition collapse. I hope this year we have a snap general election to boot the whole lot out of office.

Over the Christmas break, I have realised that my personal political outlook has drifted from being centre-left to being almost Marxist. The rank hypocrisy of the ruling elite is really beginning to annoy me. It's all the fault of the politicians for alienating the voters so much that we couldn't make a decent decision at the last general election, and we've ended up probably even worse than we were before.

Time for the revolution, folks.

If you don't like it here, you can always emigrate.

The last thing I want is another Labour government that thinks that it can carry on spending. The deficit has to be tackled, or other countries will be dissuaded from investing here because they see that the government can't keep control of it's spending. Now I know the banks have a lot to answer for, but they didn't run up the deficit - Labour did. Instead of being prudent during the good times, they continued to waste money as if it grew on trees, throwing at the HNS (for no discernible improvement), the welfare state and for creating pointless jobs in the public sector to keep the Unions happy, so they must take some of the blame for the situation we're in now.

As for tax evasion by big business (Vodafone, HSBC), this has been going on for years - it's not suuddenly sprung up since this new government came to power, so you can just as equally throw the mud at Labour for allowing it to happen.

I don't like paying more for stuff, but I understand that if we don't sort this mess out, it'll only get worse, and the longer we delay it the harder it will be. I know it's going to hit some people harder than others, but what else can you do? I see a lot of complaints and whining from the opposition, but little in the way of constructive/workable alternatives.

No, you can't always. It's hardly the cheap option.