Brown's Legacy

Since 1997, when the UK had the best occupational pensions in the world, Gordon Brown, Mr. Gordon Brown, has well, how does anyone describe what Mr. Gordon Brown, Mr. Gordon Brown, has done? Well, Mr. Gordon Brown, please describe what you have done, and why. Why? If you cannot, why can't you?

Government's £160m pension saving

Gordon Brown will pay millions less into our pension schemes after tax changes in 2008.Instead of boosting every £100 we save by another £28.20, from 2008 the chancellor will only contribute £25 - saving him £3.20.

Moving home 'costs nearly £9,500'

While estate agents' charges of £3,027 have risen roughly in line with house prices, stamp duty has shot up from an average of £543 to £5,009.

Legal fees are put at £1,000 while removal costs are now £450 on average.

Back in 1996 stamp duty was levied at just 1% on properties sold for more than £60,000.

Many buyers, including most first-time ones, escaped paying the tax at all as the average house in the UK cost just £64,441, according to the Halifax bank's house price index.

Since then higher rates of duty have been introduced.

Properties worth over £250,000 are taxed at 3% and those over £500,000 at 4%.

With the average house price now standing at more than £200,000, the vast majority of homes in the UK attract the tax when they are bought, even though the 1% stamp duty charge now kicks in only once the house is worth £125,000.

Brown's pension raid 'cost savers £100bn' | This is Money

For the first time, the devastating impact of the Chancellor's controversial tax grab in 1997 has been revealed.

He scrapped the tax relief on dividends paid into pension funds just a few weeks after Labour came to power. Shadow Home Secretary David Davis has described the move as one of the 'great scandals of the last decade'.

List of Brown's stealth taxes

The Conservatives claimed yesterday that Gordon Brown had hidden no fewer than 40 new "stealth taxes" in his Budget this week.

Stealth tax

Stealth Tax is a term used for a tax levied in such a way that is largely unnoticed, or not recognized as a tax.[1] Generally used in the UK by Conservatives to attack the New Labour government's policies. The phrase Stealth Tax should not be confused with double taxation or Privatization.

Ten years of growing stealthy taxation

Government figures show we paid £115bn in tax and national insurance in 1996-97, while this tax year, 2006-07, the Revenue expects to collect more than double that, at £234bn an increase of £119bn.
But new research ahead of Mr Brown's 11th Budget shows how savers have suffered more than most. Few people understood what Mr Brown was doing when he stripped pension funds of their tax-free status in his very first Budget in 1997, but the effects are plain to see in the table on this page. A typical private sector pension saver retiring today now gets less than a quarter of the retirement income they would have received if they retired before Mr Brown became Chancellor.

When will you be able to retire?