Just how – badly – will the Budget affect you?

The Chancellor, George Osborne, has earned a reputation for leaks, U-Turns and unworkable tweaks to our taxes. A captain of chaos, some might say. His recent achievement, killing the cash Isa and replacing it with a tax-free limit on ALL savings accounts, will be a particularly memorable mess if anyone ever works out how it’s going to work. He’s got another Budget speech planned for Wednesday 16 March. For once, we don’t know much about what’s going to be in it. This is a bad sign. There’s no general election any time soon so we can forget about bribes on that front. He’s given himself the seemingly impossible task of balancing the nation’s books by 2020.How on earth is he going to do that?This is Money editor Simon Lambert, consumer affairs editor Rachel Rickard Straus and Share Radio’s Ed Bowsher have a pretty good stab at coming up with a hit list. It’s not looking great. George is desperate to get his hands on the £21bn tax-free benefits of pensions. But we’re fairly sure, thanks to the one leak, his plans to rob us of that have been postponed. He’s already hit buy-to-let landlords – he could have another go at them without too much public anger. Fuel duty seems an easy target – and no one will mind if petrol suddenly shoots back over £1 a litre on Thursday morning. Will they? Maybe the disabled and other people on benefits could cope with further austerity measures? National Insurance is good one –it mainly affects the lower paid; possibly attractive to Osborne the political animal He’s already fiddled with stamp duty on house purchases – could he have another fiddle (on the roof) with that? A change to salary sacrifice could tackle the problem of people who get tax-free iPhones from their employers Whatever happens, we’re in for a fascinating ride and thankfully, HMRC is incredibly helpful and easy to deal with. The more complicated the tax reform the better.Also this week, and back in the real world, we’re not saving enough, some investments make money and the Ford Capri makes a surprising comeback. Georgie Frost is away.Follow us on Instagram @dmgnewmedia.Follow us on TikTok @dmgnewmediaFollow us on X @dmgnewmediaEmail us [email protected] us  020 7938 6000.Hosts: Georgie Frost, Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce, Helen CraneProducer: Georgie Frost Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.