George Osborne couldn’t really have expected a much better set of newspaper covers than the one before him this morning. Despite the dreary background picture – war, confusion, higher inflation, lower growth, the ruinous state of the public finances, etc – a handful of papers are leading on the goodies in his Budget, and specifically the £600 rise in the personal allowance that James mentioned last night. Judging by the movements of the grapevine, this will come into effect in April 2012, and will benefit more people than will the £1,000 rise already announced for this April. While that one was targeted at the least well-off by a reduction in the higher rate threshold, the suggestion now is that no-one earning less than £42,000 will be shunted into the higher rate before 2015.
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