The 2012 Budget

by James Mason 7 April 2012
Was it really a budget just for millionaires, let’s find out...   The Budget to anyone involved in finance is like an Olympic sport is to athletes. There’s the build-up, the excitement, the anticipation, the one-on-one, the team spirit, the-them-and-us, the brothers-in-arms and of course the event itself. It starts around the end of the Pre-Budget Report. We spend the winter in training, building finger muscles for calculator speed, ben...

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Figs & Dates

by James Mason 27 February 2012
March, and yes it’s Budget month; but let’s not dwell on it.   Allegedly, temptation is the ruin of all men, and so in a month that sees the chancellor’s Budget, I am going to try and resist the incredible urge to speculate on what might be and what may come. Instead, I am using this week as an opportunity to focus the minds and ready the business diaries of the Brighton & Hove business community with the following key tax dates. Do...

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Classic Investments

by James Mason 23 February 2012
Think again if you think a classic investment is a pension policy…   It was recently suggested to me that survival is always a positive outcome, if that is true then one might argue that is all that came out of 2011; the world did indeed survive. Yet while international markets troughed and peeked and some of the biggest economies danced a merry jig with double-dip recessions, quantitative-easing, and credit-easing downgrades, there was...

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Taxation v. Spending

by James Mason 8 February 2012
More drama than Alien v. Predator, the UK National Debt reaches a staggering £1 trillion…   Please bear with me. Ordinarily my remit is to write on micro subjects to better aid the understanding of business related, tax and financial issues for the local and wider business community; and I have said it before and I will say it again that this is not a political column and I am not an economist. However, I couldn’t resist the temptation ...

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