Lead letters: Budget

1.

The Chancellor expects that the measures introduced in his latest Budget will result in the elimination of the Budget deficit and produce an annual surplus of £7 billion by 2020 ("Chancellor seeks fairytale end ... but which tale of Grimm is it?", The Herald, March 19).

Good luck to him as his and the Coalition's original prediction was that we would have reached that point by now following the first tranche of austerity measures.

Basic arithmetic again. If we assume that, this time, the Chancellor's predictions are realised and, after cuts in the budgets of some parts of the public sector of the order of 20 per cent plus we do have a surplus of £7bn, and even if the country never ever borrows another penny, we will still be left with a national debt in excess of £1.5 trillion. Annual interest repayments on that debt will be a major, if not the greatest, element of government expenditure as the cost currently exceeds government spending on the armed forces and the defence of the nation. If and when interest rates rise to realistic levels, God only knows what will happen.

Nobody pretends that the proposed austerity measures will not be more draconian that those we have already experienced but, even if the public sector shrinks to the extent that it is self-financing through taxation without borrowing, paying down the mountain of accumulated debt at a rate of £7bn a year will take decades.

Unless the country finds a method of increasing revenue to replace the tax revenue lost by job losses in the manufacturing industry and becomes less reliant on a corrupt financial sector, our children and their children face 200 years of austerity. It goes without saying that, by that time, the Chancellor and his chums at Westminster will be long gone after a happy and comfortable retirement.

David J Crawford,

Flat 3/3, 131 Shuna Street,

Glasgow.

2.

George Osborne has stated that it takes some 40 minutes to file a self-asssessment tax return and, under his new system, it will take only 10 minutes.

The 40 minutes is about correct, provided there are no hitches with the system. However, the preparation of the accounts to get to that stage can take hours, days or even weeks.

Several of my clients send or receive more than one hundred invoices a day. Then there are cash payments and receipts to add, motor expenses or mileage to calculate, VAT, overheads such as rent, rates, heat and light and insurance all to be calculated.

And all this requires to be done by the business owner or his accountant. No small business can spare the time from business to calculate and file all of these.

And when will this system, like Real Time Information (RTI), need to be filed weekly, or lead to fines? Will the HMRC computer be able to cope with all the additional data input? It is barely holding its own in the weekly struggle to cope with RTI data.

Far from assisting SMEs, the Chancellor is imposing an additional burden that might well cripple small businesses and the HMRC computer. Amateur accountants: BAH.

Hugh W Dunlop,

31 Underwood Street,

Glasgow.

3.

So the Chancellor of the Exchequer is to set aside £1 million to celebrate the Battle of Agincourt. George Osbourne perhaps needs reminded that this battle was won by England, not the UK, and predates the Union by some 300 years.

The battle was a complete disaster for the French, leading to the near collapse of the country. In desperation the French turned to their old allies, the Scots, for help.

Some 12,000 Scots duly answered the call. Six years later, in 1421, at the Battle of Baugé, they defeated the English army, killing the Duke of Clarence in the process.

The military intervention of the Scots brought valuable breathing space to the French, and the delay ultimately saved France from English domination. Given the importance of this battle to the Scots, will the Chancellor also pledge a further £1m in 2021 to allow we Scots to celebrate this particular historic victory?

Andrew J Beck,

3 Andrew Crescent,

Stenhousemuir,

Stirlingshire.