Loans Scotland

It is becoming a fact of life that every labour budget offers fantastic tax cuts from different member of our community (god I hate that word) which are later revealed to have been nullified by swingeing tax rises somewhere else.

Two techniques are favoured: introduce benefits which can only be enjoyed after an Operation Overlord level of form filling which nobody can be bothered to do or create a blizzard of tax changes which confound even experts.

The most recent example is this week where another tax cutting budget has after some analysis turned out to be tax raising with most families facing another £50 tax per week by 2012.

The IFS has successfully analysed the small print of the budget and identified that across a wide range of areas the government will either raise money through fiscal drag or increase it by tinkering with details and numbers.

As with every labour budget - a silver lining rapidly becoming a cloud

Taxpayers Alliance is predicting that average council taxes will rise by another £375 over the next 5 years. Unsurprisingly everybody involved is blaming everybody else for the problems. Hazel Blears is almost certain to have some very rocky times ahead as she tries to defend a settlement that everybody else is describing as the harshest of all time for local councils

For council tax payer, what to do? Not a lot except leave the country.

No surprises to hear that first-time housebuyers are becoming another endangered species in the UK housing market both sides of the border even though house prices in Scotland continue to lag England (except Auld Reekie).

The number of people describing themselves as first-time homeowners dropped between March 2007 and September 2007, from 20% of the UK population to 16%, according to money-supermarket.com, the price comparison site. They were backed by separate figures from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) which confirmed that demand among first-time buyers seems to be dampening.

The number of new buyer inquiries fell at the fastest rate since March 2003 in September 07 and for the tenth month in a row, while house prices fell for the second successive month, according to a RICS report.

No surprises here with interest rates still on the up, house prices very high and Northern Rock scaring the hell out of jittery consumers. Typically a fall in the number of first time buyers is disastrous for the market. However, the announcement by Chancellor Darling of a fall in capital gains tax rates makes owning property even more attractive to investors who typically favour 1 and 2 bedroom properties so the market may inversely take off once again fuelled by speculation which will not be good news for the ailing labour government.

Firms that offer IVAs in England and Scotland are considering withdrawing services that help citizens set up IVAs. Financial services companies are increasingly unhappy about paying upfront fees and also want to restrict IVAs from becoming an easy option for debt-laden consumers. For creditors, an IVA can mean only recovering 30% of outstanding debt so they have an interest in ensuring that only really insolvent consumers can access them.

As personal debt continues to rise along with personal bankruptcy, it will be interesting to see how this market continues to shake out.