The July Budget will give Chancellor George Osborne his first chance to show how he proposes to shrink the gap between government spending and tax revenues.
Though he has committed not to raise taxes, the Sunday Times thinks he may have a big tax loophole in his sights. ‘Salary sacrifice’ allows you to reduce your salary on which you pay tax and national insurance and receive benefits that don’t attract those taxes – the two most popular being employer pension contributions and childcare vouchers. The Times claims that salary sacrifice costs the Exchequer £5 billion a year in lost tax revenues, and urges readers to act now to sign up to schemes that could be scotched in July.