A taxing weekend for the money sections – MRM’s weekly round up

So the uncertainty is finally over. After weeks of speculating over what the election result might be and how a hung government will affect us all, we finally have our result – a new Lib Dem/Conservative coalition. And as is to be somewhat expected, the papers were full of this new alliance, but they really only had one key topic in mind. Tax.

The Daily Telegraph looked at the tax winners and losers under the new coalition, pointing out that millions would benefit from the drop in income tax, although this obvious ‘win’ would be somewhat cancelled out by the huge hike in CGT and the back down on inheritance tax cuts. The Sunday edition of the paper was somewhat less subtle as it warned readers to ‘take cover from the £3,000 tax bombshell’. The paper also gave advice on how to get round the CGT rise.

Tax was also at the forefront of the Mail on Sunday’s money pages, as it looked at what would change for the public, and who would feel the most pain of the coalition cuts. Jeff Prestridge also made this the subject of his comment piece as he urged George Osborne to play fair over CGT.

The Sunday Times also went to town on tax, looking at it from a CGT, mortgages and general finances point of view. It also helpfully pointed out which party came up with which idea – just to ensure readers’ outrage could be pointed in the right political direction. In the Saturday edition of The Times, David Budworth looked in-depth at what we can all expect from the Budget (which will be on 22 June, it was announced this morning) and tax is basically all we can look forward to, sentiments echoed by Matthew Vincent in the FT Weekend.

So all in all, pretty depressing news. But on the plus side – and yes, this is a shameless piece of self-promotion – a fabulous piece of research from Ignis Asset Management was front page news of FTfm and also garnered a mention in Matthew Vincent’s column in FT Weekend. Well worth a read!

And the scores this week are: