The losers and winners in the next UK tax year are announced

The tax year starts again on Friday, and with it will be a few ups and downs for various groups. The people who will benefit are drivers, low wage workers and graduates while the people who will see the downside are benefit claimers, shareholders and higher earners from Scotland.

The Winners

University Graduates

Uni graduates in Wales and England who commence study after Sept 2012 wont need to repay loans until they earn more than £25 k pa. This level is raised from a previous £21,000 per annum. Also, graduates who are on bigger wages packets will benefit with anyone earning £40,000 PA saving £30 a month because their repayments have dropped from £142 to £112 per month.

Low/Minimum wage employees

These employess will see over inflation level pay raises. With the 18-20 doing the best who will get a 54% increase up to £5.90. Those over the age of 25 will see an increase of around 4.4% who are on the national living wage, will see their pay increase by 4.4 per cent.

Drivers

At the most recent budget, fuel duty was frozen for the 7^th year in a row, coming post financial crisis this was a sage moved by successive governments. This will keep the rate on both petrol and derv at 57.95p a litre. This duty freeze will in real terms save the ‘average’ driver over £160 per year.

The Losers this tax year

Various Shareholders

The taxfree allowance on dividends will drop from £5000 to £2000 this tax year, meaning that the amount of money shareholders can get in dividends before they get taxed has been more than halved. The Uk treasury has stated they think that over 65% of people who get a dividend income will not be affected by the change but over 2 million people will lose on average £315 during this upcoming tax year.

Benefit recipients who are of working age.

Benefit claimants are going to do badly because benefits for working age people are frozen, meaning they will not receive any extra to match inflation.This has been forecast to cost the average household on benefits over £450 by 2020 according to the Fiscal Studies institute. This freeze involves many benefits like child tax credit, child benefit, working tax credit, and jobseekers allowance among others.

High earning Scottish people

The parliament in Scotland has brought in 4 new tax rates with 3 all new thresholds. This will mean that they will be taking more money from the high rate earners in Scotland. The rates of income tax in Scotland will be 19% basic rate, and a max rate tax band of 46% . The basic rate is 1% lower than elsewhere, and the high rate is 1% more than the rest of the UK.