Currently using a Discretionary Will Trust Clause in their wills (which anyone likely to be troubled by Inheritance Tax will have already done), both partners in a couple can each get a £300,000 Inheritance Tax allowance which the government announced last year would rise to £350,000 per partner by 2010. Notice the figures, £300,000 per partner = £600,000 per couple, rising to £350,000 per partner = £700,000 per couple.

This is just this announcing things that they have already announced just in a different way.

Why have a party that seems to have run out of ideas in power?

Looks like Darling almost borrowed the current Conservative proposals as his own.

In 1997, after a decade or so in power, the Conservatives seemed to have lost their way, and now it seems as though New Labia is in the same boat.

Firstly the claim that everyone likely to have to pay IHT will have a trust in place is just plain wrong, the change removes this need all together so is an improvement not just spin. Also the changes to widows/widowers has moved many out of an IHT situation, again not just spin.

Aye, one wonders weather it'll be the Labour party or the uk economy that goes bankrupt first.

I dont really care how much tax you pay after you wait for your parents to drop dead. Ghoulish is not in it. Sick.

so you put your life savings into a business, work your butt of for twenty or thirty years, pay tax on your profits; then when you want to sell the business and retire on the proceeds the chancellor wants 18% (because his fat cat friends in the city were using taper relief to only pay 10% tax on their dodgy income).

How exactly is that fair?

AndyD 8-(#

New Liebour, new spin.

So, after raiding pension funds to pay for more assorted useless quangos, an inflation busting pay rise for all those 'career politicians' (are you donating any of your '£150,000 +whatever you can claim' GUARANTEED p.a salary to charity Mr Hain? Thought not) - we had some nicely orchestrated righteous indignation when city bonuses were announced and the 'fix' announced is the scrapping of taper relief on Capital Gains Tax and a blanket 18% rate introduced. Of course this only affects those greedy good for nothing city types right? WRONG!!! It's a tax increase of 12.5% for basic rate tax payers on any capital gains - so you pay your income tax when you get your money, you put it into a unit trust to save for a rainy day ('cos your pension ain't worth sh** after Gordy's raid) and hey you also pay another 18% when you draw any money from that unit trust. Forecast growth of 2.5 - 3% next year - cloud cuckoo land - so we'll see another shortfall in the Treasury's coffers, more government borrowing to pay for more overpaid NHS managers, an ID card that nobody wants and costs billions to implement... Wooohoooo! It's back to the seventies boys and girls, the strikes have already started!