SOME GOOD., .SOME BAD
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• Maybe it was the thought of an election in the air. Or maybe, just for once, we witnessed the spectacle of a Chancellor of the Exchequer finally realising that the longawaited economic recovery lies as much in the hands of road hauliers as any other sector of British industry.
Whatever the reason, operators can be thankful for being spared something a lot worse. The bad news is that the tax on diesel is up, but the good news is that VED for large goods vehicles is being frozen. Considering how VED has been hammered in past Budgets, it at least meant there was no "double whammy" from Lamont.
Unfortunately many other areas were ignored, not least first-year capital allowances. Having publicly acknowledged that small businesses are the life blood of the economy the Chancellor at least went some way towards supporting the statement with changes to inheritance tax, which will come as a welcome surprise to many small, family-run haulage companies, together with a promise of a VAT review and easier VAT payment procedures.
Keeping Uniform Business Rate increases in line with inflation and making no further changes to corporation tax will also provide some, though not much, help to big-fleet operators.
Perhaps it's a case of being thank ful for small mercies . . although those mercies are still pretty small.
Whatever the Budget may have done it certainly hasn't provided that dreadfully named "kick-start" to the economy — but then as the Chancellor said "the challenge before us is not to provide some artificial shortterm stimulus to the economy".
There cer tainly won't be too many road hauliers accusing him of that.