Budget 2007

My rule-of-thumb is that the Chancellor has done well if I lose out from a Budget. People like me are doing fine - so I'd prefer the government looked after the less well-off. For someone to gain, someone needs to lose, and I prefer not to prosper at the expense of education, health, pensioners etc.

Usually the effect is minimal - couple of pence on fuel duty, bit of tweaking to the tax rates.

This time Gordon Brown has hit me really quite hard, and I don't feel nearly as charitable.

Let's cut a long boring story down to size. I run a business selling the contents of my head and renting my typing fingers.

To begin with I ran it as a Limited Company, only for a tax change to come that went back in time, re-wrote my previous ten year's tax returns and nearly ended with me losing my house.

To avoid this happening again, I joined an umbrella company and paid tax the same way as ordinary employees. The one difference was that I was able to claim expenses against tax. To me this is only fair - I'm not a normal employee - I spend over 100 nights a year away from home in hotels and drive 20,000 miles a year between client sites. I also have 5 or 6 "employers" in any given year. I don't get sick-pay, paid-holidays and pay my own pension.

After the new budget, I can't claim my travelling expense unless I set up my own limited company again and risk the Time-Travelling Taxman Experience happening all over again.

The 2% reduction in tax is but a rounding error compared to this.

Sorry : a moan from a comparatively well-off person about money : how tedious.

And what's he playing at taking away the 10% rate for the less well-off ??