Though its share of the smartphone market has fallen slightly since 2010, it still accounted for 27.7 per cent of all smartphone sales in Britain in the year to the end of December, according to the latest industry sales figures seen by Financial Mail.

Its share in 2010 was 28.4 per cent, according to researcher GfK.

Smartphones allow users to connect to the internet, and last month, always a strong time for phone sales in the run-up to Christmas, Black-Berry took 26.3 per cent of the smartphone market.

There are now 8.5 million BlackBerry users in Britain while its global subscriber base grew by 35 per cent year on year to 75 million.

It is understood that Apple’s iPhone is in second place, ahead of phones that use Google’s Android operating system, among them HTC and Samsung.

Nokia is thought to have suffered – the company admitted last week that its smartphone sales had dropped by almost a third in the last three months of the year.

The figures will come as a welcome boost to Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian company that makes the BlackBerry.

Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis stepped down as co-executives, though they will remain on the board. The pair have come under fire for their stewardship of the company.

Its Playbook tablet computer, a rival to Apple’s iPad, failed to gain ground and was severely discounted. RIM’s share price, £10.66 when it closed on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Friday, has fallen by about 80 per cent since last March and there has been speculation that the company is likely to be sold to a rival.

The changes announced last week also included a new chairman, Barbara Stymiest.

RIM’s reputation took another severe knock last autumn when a service breakdown saw customers left without access to information on their phones for days.

RIM’s main rival, Apple, performed far ahead of expectations, selling 37 million iPhones worldwide and reporting profits of $13.06 billion (£8.32billion) for the quarter to December.

The new chief executive of RIM is Thorsten Heins, formerly head of product and sales. His priority will be the launch of a new version of the Playbook tablet next month.

>> Or for more news, views and articles about Alzheimers and Dementia specifically click here.

By Sarah Whitebloom

The brouhaha about Meryl Streep’s new film, The Iron Lady, shows that dementia, or at least a depiction of its effects, is clearly still a taboo for many people – despite the fact that three quarters of a million people in Britain have the condition.

The film, which I haven’t yet seen (no time to go to the pictures), shows the impact of dementia on the former Prime Minister Lady Thatcher. And, looking at letters pages and reviews, it evidently has all sorts of people up in arms because of this.

It may be of questionable taste to make a movie about a living individual’s descent into dementia. As I say, I haven’t seen it. But it can only be right that the true impact of dementia is laid bare on film.

We’ve had films about all sorts of mental conditions from Rain Man to Spellbound to The Madness of King George to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. And there have been movies about illness and disability such as The King’s Speech, Love Story and The Elephant Man.

Yet, there have been precious few films about dementia. A couple spring to mind: Iris, about the writer Iris Murdoch, starring Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent, and Away From Her, starring Julie Christie.

But most depictions of the condition on our screens portray delightfully vague and eccentric people doing funny things. Just last night, [January 15], in the new BBC series, Call the Midwife, we saw an amusing elderly nun who ate cake all the time. This may have been the case, since the programme is based on a true story. But it is the standard image of dementia with which we are presented and very far from reality for many sufferers.

Of course, there can be amusing moments with dementia. And you have to laugh because otherwise… For instance, on being told that he was actually married to ‘that strange woman’ in the kitchen, my father said: ‘It’s just one blow after another today.’

But people should be under no illusion about dementia and we should not seek to hide those away who suffer from it, as though they have something of which they should be ashamed.

Indeed, if people realise that such a powerful person as Lady Thatcher has the condition, then it might help to remove the stigma.  And there is most definitely stigma attached to dementia. At the moment, you get the impression that some people believe sufferers bring it on themselves in some way – by not keeping themselves alert or not doing enough to help themselves.

Whatever people think about Lady Thatcher, who could accuse her of not being alert? If it helps tackle the taboo and people’s prejudices, then the film will have helped sufferers.

Are critics of The Iron Lady actually more uncomfortable for themselves than for her?

>> FMWF would like to hear your views. You can comment below or email whocares@fmwf.com.

The business guru, who has unveiled 12 new wannabes taking part in BBC1′s Young Apprentice, said the hopefuls and their parents are fully informed of what TV exposure will mean to them.

His comments came after criticism of ITV’s The X Factor for including contestants as young as 16.

Lord Sugar said he was aware of the discussion about the talent show’s age limit, and said: “That’s why we look after them so well, we’re very, very conscious of that.”

He said the BBC was careful not to exploit young people and had ditched an earlier idea of Lord Sugar’s to feature contestants from 14 to 16.

“We realised it was impossible to comply with the correct mentoring so that’s why we upped the ante to 16 to 17-year-olds – but these kids are very well looked after.

“I won’t have anything to do with it, neither would Nick (Hewer) or Karren (Brady), with exploiting youngsters, and on occasion some of them get a bit emotional and we calm down, we stop, we give them time and we move on.”

Viewers will note that Lord Sugar, Hewer and Brady are noticeably softer with the younger contestants than they are with contestants on the original series, and those who are fired travel home in Lord Sugar’s Rolls Royce rather than the standard black cab.

Lord Sugar added that producers give a “complete lecture” on what to expect once the series airs, and that contestants are able to drop out of the process if they do not feel they are strong enough to take part.

“We really do tell them before, and the parents, long before we start filming. They need to understand that they have the right to pull out after giving them a complete lecture on what is likely to happen once their face hits the screen, only then, when parents and children themselves fully understand the ramifications, do we go into the final stages of selection,” he said.

During last year’s series, 16-year-old finalist Zoe Plummer caused a stir and was branded by some as bossy, but Lord Sugar said she is having the last laugh.

“Zoe has got some business running now so she’s alright,” he said.

Brady added that Young Apprentice was not comparable with The X Factor, saying: “Our series doesn’t show that quick fix. It’s not a talent show, it does show that you do have to actually think about things, you need to know a little bit about maths and you do have to work hard and show determination.”

This year’s contestants include a 16-year-old boy who has already set up three businesses and a 16-year-old girl who has her own production company and makes films for charities.

In the first episode the boys and the girls are separated and told to make their own ice cream to sell on a hot summer day.

Other tasks include launching a new brand of deodorant, selling a product for the parent and baby market, and creating an online video game.

The series winner will have access to £25,000 to kick-start their own ventures.

Young Apprentice starts on BBC1 on Monday October 24 at 9pm.

The contestants are:

:: Lizzie Magee, 16, from Liverpool, has her own business designing personalised guitar straps and also breeds Jack Russell terriers.

:: Ben Fowler, 16, from Birmingham, has his own allotment and gardening business.

:: Gbemi Okunlola, 16, from London, has her own clothing line.

:: Harry Hitchens, 17, from Brighton, runs his own photography business and has been working since he was nine.

:: Hannah Richards, 16, from Berkshire, has made money re-selling vintage clothes and creating school leavers’ hoodies.

:: Harry Maxwell, 16, from Oxfordshire, has started three successful businesses, encompassing travel, marketing, property and cosmetics.

:: Haya Al Dlame, 17, from London, sells items on eBay.

:: James McCullagh, 17, from County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, got the joint highest score in GCSE economics in Northern Ireland.

:: Hayley Forrester, 16, from Shrewsbury, rears chickens and sells eggs.

:: Lewis Roman, 16, from Merseyside, started his work career as a stylist in a hair salon.

:: Zara Brownless, 16, from Hertfordshire, has her own production company and makes films for charities.

:: Mahamed Awale, 16, from Greater London, is the Youth Parliament representative for his borough and has made money buying and selling TV satellites.

The iPhone 4S will go on sale in the UK on October 14 – the same day it is released in the United States.

Phil Schiller, senior vice president of Apple, last night said the new phone looked similar to the previous iPhone4 and shared its glass front and back and trademark stainless steel band.

He added: “But don’t be deceived. Inside it’s all new.”

The phone has a new A5 chip inside which allows it to use much faster graphics for gameplay and download data twice as fast.

Senior vice president of iPhone Software Scott Forstall came on stage to show off the voice recognition software, called Siri, which allows users to ask the phone questions and get answers.

He said it works as “your humble, intelligent personal assistant that goes everywhere with you and can do anything for you just by asking”.

Mr Forstall said Siri understood the language and context of users’ questions and then gave a series of examples by asking the phone about the weather, his diary and the stockmarkets.

He said: “I’ve been in the AI field for a long time and this still blows me away.”

The phone has an eight megapixel camera with five lenses, one more than the iPhone4, which will result in sharper pictures.

It also allows users to take HD video.

The press conference at Apple’s California base was carried by videolink to its store in Covent Garden in central London.

It is the company’s first major product launch in years without Steve Jobs.

New CEO Tim Cook took over after Jobs, who has been battling health problems, resigned from the post in August.

The 64 giga bytes phone will sell for 399 US dollars (£260), the 32gb for 299 US dollars (£195) and the 16gb for 199 US dollars (£130).

The phone is expected to sell well. Thousands of gadget fans queued to get their hands on the iPhone4 when it first went on sale last June.

Apple’s flagship Regent Street store had to open its doors early to deal with the demand.

Technology expert Ernest Doku of uSwitch.com said some people would be “bitterly disappointed” at the announcement of an upgraded phone rather than a brand new model.

He added: “A phone which talks to you and answers your questions? That’s the iPhone 4S. Slightly disappointing from a hardware standpoint, but Siri has the potential to revolutionise how we use our mobiles.

“Apple is gambling that people will see this as a reinvention of the wheel.”

Thompson’s programme aims to make 20 per cent savings in the BBC’s budget over the four years to April 2017. The BBC receives £3.5 billion a year from the licence fee.

Despite fears that the cuts would result in the closure of one or more of the BBC’s digital channels – a petition to ‘save’ BBC4 has 66,000 signatures – it is understood that none is likely to face closure.

The BBC has 22,000 staff and there have been suggestions that 1,500 of the 8,000 jobs at BBC News alone will go.

BBC2 is expected to broadcast repeats of programmes aired on BBC4 along with News 24 content during the day. No local radio stations will close, nor will local radio merge with Radio 5 Live.

There will be a reduction in costume dramas, such as Lark Rise To Candleford or South Riding, which are expensive to produce, but an increase in repeats.

The BBC will hang on to its Wimbledon coverage, despite signs earlier this year that it would reduce expenditure on sport.

At the time it seemed just like any other meeting on the 30th floor of Goldman Sachs’ New York headquarters. But now it is revealed as a pivotal moment for the most famous of investment banks – and the financial meltdown that still grips the world.

About 20 executives gathered for the meeting on December 14, 2006. At the time, most countries were enjoying a massive boom in housing markets and investment banks were making huge profits.

But by the end of the meeting, Goldmans’ top brass had decided a storm was brewing and that they would launch what chief financial officer David Viniar was later to call ‘the big short’. The strategy was a great success for Goldmans, and the handful of executive and traders who carried it out have been lauded by their peers.

But the plan has also unleashed a torrent of trouble, culminating last week in calls from an influential Senate committee that Goldmans should face prosecution by the Department of Justice for misleading clients and Congress over its role in the American subprime mortgage crash, which led to the worldwide crisis.

The Senate Committee on Investigations, headed by the formidable Senator Carl Levin, argues that Goldmans took out huge short positions – gambles on the collapse in the American mortage market – while busily selling the same mortgage investments to clients.

The bank has already been dubbed ‘a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity’ by one American journalist. But the Senate report takes the allegations to a more serious level.

It is also a startling vindication for author William D Cohan, whose book, Money And Power, How Goldman Sachs Came To Rule The World, published last week, lifts the lid on Goldmans’ pivotal role in the meltdown of 2007 and 2008 and includes interviews with all the key players behind ‘the big short’. Cohan stops short of alleging that Goldmans broke the law, but speaking to Financial Mail last week he was unequivocal in his view that it made things worse.

‘I don’t think Goldmans foresaw the crisis, but I do think they exacerbated the crisis,’ he said.

In his book Cohan charts the strategy that emerged from the thinking of a handful of figures. One was Jeremy Primer, a Harvard-educated maths genius whose computer models alerted the bank to how small levels of defaults would quickly turn apparently sound assets into junk.

But the key players in enacting the strategy were Dan Sparks, head of the mortgage division, and his most senior traders, Josh Birnbaum and Michael Swenson.

All three were key witnesses called by Levin’s committee a year ago. The trio were quizzed alongside the now notorious trader Fabrice Tourre, who is still defending himself in the American courts against a separate claim by the Securities and Exchange Commission that he duped investors into buying mortgage assets that he expected to collapse in value.

That trade was in fact a sideshow to the wider strategy set in motion by that momentous meeting in December 2006. From that point onwards Goldmans began to cut its exposure to American mortgages and set up a series of short positions to gamble on a housing market crash.

At the same time it began publicly marking down the value of those mortgage securities it held, forcing other banks to do the same. But unlike Goldmans, the others had not taken out short positions and when the crisis came they could not offset the huge losses these markdowns involved.

Within eight months of the December meeting, the storm had broken. Credit was drying up in financial markets, rumours of banks in crisis swept through the world’s financial capitals and by September the squeeze on banks led, in Britain, to the emergency loans to Northern Rock and eventually its collapse into State ownership.

Cohan, who interviewed Birnbaum and many others for his book, claims that in 2007 Goldmans’ mortgage desk made a profit of $4 billion from its shorting, helping the bank turn a total profit for the year of $13.5 billion – $9 billion of which ended up as bonuses for staff. Birnbaum, Cohan claims, had wanted to be even more aggressive but the risk department at Goldmans was frightened of going too far in case the gambles went wrong.

Birnbaum and Sparks have since left Goldmans. In Birnbaum’s personal evaluation form for 2007 – a process under which all Goldman employees are required to assess their own performance – Birnbaum wrote: ‘My performance in 2007 has been my best ever by any objective measure.’ He now runs his own hedge fund.

Goldmans issued a statement saying it disagreed with Levin’s report but ‘took seriously the issues’. It also argued that while its short positions did make money, these were usually offset by long positions in which it stood to lose from the collapsing mortgage market.

On allegations that it misled Levin’s committee, it stated: ‘The testimony we gave was truthful and accurate and this is confirmed by the sub-committee’s own report.’

Cohan, himself a former investment banker, doubts that Goldman broke the law. Indeed, he argues Goldman is not even unique.

‘I worked at Lazard, JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch and I think all of them are basically ethically challenged,’ he said. ‘There’s no saintly behaviour on Wall Street. But these others are just not as well organised as Goldmans.’

Money And Power, How Goldman Sachs Came To Rule The World, by William D Cohan, is published by Allen Lane – click here to take a look.

WHEN Allison Cardona saw the craze in the U.S and Canada for hand decorated cookies she knew she’d found her business niche.

In 2008, in the middle of the recession, Allison, 37, set up the Custom Cookie Company from her home in Hindhead, Surrey. The business, which employs four people, offers a wide range of designs and characters and consumers can choose personalised cookies.

Last month Allison signed a deal with Harvey Nichols to stock her Custom Cookie Co cards – cookies packaged in a box with a pen of edible icing which allows people to write their own message on the cookie and then send it.

The business, which is self-financing, now has a turnover of £140,000 and Allison is looking to expand into new premises.

She says: ‘We started in a recession which was tough but we stand out because we are offering something new and different. As recognition has grown we have done increasingly well around gift times, such as birthdays, Christmas and Easter, when we typically take 150 orders a day, compared to an average of 30.’

One of the biggest challenges Allison faced was scaling up the business to cope with demand, while maintaining the quality of the product. She contacted Business Link who helped mentor her, while the Manufacturing Advisory Service helped her to systemise the orders and ensured the business become more efficient.

Allison believes the size of the business is also one of its strengths. She says: ‘We are successful because the product is pretty unique and secondly partly because we are very small. For bigger firms the recession may have hit them harder but our size means we can be flexible and react to problems quickly.’

>> We’ve got ahost of news, vews and in-depth invterviews in FMWF’s Female Authors section here

The Orange Prize for Fiction, Britain’s only annual book award for fiction written by a woman, has unveiled its 2011 shortlist.

Half of the six final entries are penned by first-time authors signalling the “rude health” of women writers in the country today according to chair of the judges Bettany Hughes.

“Our judging meeting fizzed for many hours with conversations about the originality, excellence and readability of the books in front of us - credit to the calibre of submissions this year,” Hughes added, “The verve and scope of storylines pays compliment to the female imagination.

“There are no subjects these authors don’t dare to tackle. Even though the stories in our final choices range from kidnapping to colonialism, from the persistence of love to Balkan folk-memory, from hermaphroditism to abuse in care, the books are written with such a skillful lightness of touch, humour, sympathy and passion, they all make for an exhilarating and uplifting read. This shortlist should give hours of reading pleasure to the wider world.”

The authors on the shortlist are:

Téa Obreht for the Tiger’s Wife (1st novel)
Kathleen Winter for Annabel (1st novel)
Emma Henderson for Grace Williams Says it Loud (1st novel)
Emma Donoghue  for The Room (7^th novel)
Aminatta Forna for The Memory of Love (2^nd novel)
Nicole Krauss for Great House (3^rd novel)

The prize was launched in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction by women throughout the world to the widest range of readers possible and is awarded for the best novel for the year written by a woman.

This years judges are chair Bettany Hughes, broadcaster, historian and author; Liz Calder, founder-director of Bloomsbury Publishing; Tracy Chevalier, novelist; Helen Lederer, actress and writer; and Susanna Reid, BBC Journalist and broadcaster.

The winner receives a cheque for £30,000 and will be announced in London at the Royal Festival Hall on 8 June.

George Osborne called Wednesday’s Budget ‘tax neutral’ – and he was right. In total, the measures the Chancellor announced are forecast to cost the Treasury just £30 million over the next five years as tax cuts and extra spending are matched by increased revenue from elsewhere.

But there is nothing ‘neutral’ when it comes to the impact of the Budget on households up and down the country.

Virtually all families will still see a tax squeeze over the next few years as increases announced in previous Budgets take effect. National Insurance rises, tax credit cuts, pay freezes and the continuing pain of higher prices and VAT at 20 per cent make a toxic brew.

Over the next five pages, Financial Mail explains when and where the key tax changes and spending cuts will bite.

WHAT’S IN STORE

You need a calendar, a calculator – and a bottle of aspirin – to size up last week’s Budget and chart its impact over the years ahead.

The Chancellor unveiled 57 substantial tax and spending changes – but this comes on top of a further 81 tax tweaks already in the pipeline that have yet to take effect.

Overall, official figures show that the impact of Wednesday’s Budget, plus other measures already announced by the Coalition and Labour, is to make the average household almost £400 a year worse off by the tax year 2012-13.

Already in effect
DUTY on fuel cut by 1p a litre and a planned rise of 4p a litre postponed to 2012.

Tax on cigarettes and tobacco reformed and increased, adding 33p to a packet of standard cigarettes and 50p a packet to ‘economy’ cigarettes.

Monday March 28

DUTY on alcohol rises by inflation plus two per cent. This will add 4p to a pint of beer, 15p to a bottle of wine and 54p to a bottle of spirits.

April 6

AS previously announced, the income tax personal allowance – the amount you can earn before tax applies – is raised by £1,000 to £7,475. This will take about 900,000 people out of the tax net and represents a £200 a year tax cut for a basic-rate taxpayer.

The higher personal allowances for those aged 65 and over rise from £9,490 to £9,940 and for the over-75s from £9,640 to £10,090. But these start to be clawed back once an older person’s income passes £24,000.

But at the same time, the higherrate income tax threshold – the income at which someone starts paying 40 per cent tax – is lowered by £2,400 a year to £35,000.

This means the higher rate kicks in once income passes £42,475, less than the current £43,875 – dragging up to 700,000 households into the top-rate tax.

And anyone currently paying tax at 40 per cent or higher does not gain from the increase in personal allowance.

CHILDREN

CHILD tax credits will be reformed. Families on the lowest incomes get an above-inflation rise in credits worth up to £150 a year – paid for by cuts for middle-earners.

From today, households with an income of £40,000 can no longer claim the benefit while credits will be curtailed for those on incomes between about £21,000 and £40,000, with credits removed more quickly as a family’s income rises. The Government is also scrapping the ‘baby element’ of the credit.

Chartered accountancy firm Blick Rothenberg says a couple with two children and a joint annual income of £45,000 will save £427 a year in lower tax and NI – but lose child tax credits of £333, giving them a net gain of £94.

Meanwhile, tax breaks on childcare costs will be curtailed for those signing up to employer voucher schemes from today. The amount of tax-free pay will be retained at £55 a week for basic-rate taxpayers but capped at £28 a week for 40 per cent taxpayers and £22 a week for toprate earners.

However, those already claiming, such as Karen and Dominic Anderson from Long Ashton, near Bristol, will be able to carry on getting the larger benefit. The couple have three children – Cameron, 8, Laura, 6, and Katherine, 3.

Katherine goes to nursery three days a week while the older children both go to after-school clubs, with fees totalling more than £700 a month.

Karen, 37, works three days a week as a product manager at share registrar Computershare, while Dominic, 41, is a chartered engineer in the aerospace industry.

They both claim childcare vouchers through their employers allowing £110 of nursery fees to be paid from untaxed income each week. Karen says: ‘It’s good news we can carry on getting the vouchers as they make a big difference.

‘There were no surprises in the Budget. Neither of us expected to be better off, given the dire economic circumstances.’ Both Karen and Dominic will gain slightly from higher personal tax allowances coming in from April 2012.

But like other families, their child benefit is frozen from today for the next three years, staying at £20.30 a week for their first child, Cameron, and £13.40 a week for both Laura and Katherine. The payment is worth £47.10 a week.

The Chancellor was ominously silent on his longer-term plans to stop child benefit by 2013 for families containing a higher-rate taxpayer, which would include the Andersons. There are still no details of exactly when or how this tax grab might work. (Click here for our Childcare section)

NATIONAL INSURANCE

SIGNIFICANT increases in National Insurance also take effect from today. The standard rate for employees jumps from 11 per cent to 12 per cent. The higher rate, paid once earnings pass £42,475, will double from one to two per cent.

But some of the extra tax is being reinvested to protect lower earners by raising the threshold at which National Insurance applies to £139 a week. Those earning less than £20,000 a year should pay slightly less NI. The self-employed see a similar jump in their NI bill, with the rate on Class 4 contributions rising from eight to nine per cent. The employers’ rate increases from 12.8 per cent to 13.8 per cent on the wages they pay. But the starting level rises sharply, going from £110 a week today to £136.

BENEFITS

FROM this week, increases in State benefits, public sector pensions and tax credits will be linked to a different measure of inflation. The Consumer Prices Index tends to grow more slowly than the existing measure, the Retail Prices Index.

The change is expected to save almost £6 billion a year by 2014-15 as benefits rise more slowly.

There will be a pay freeze for most workers in the public sector. Those earning less than £21,000 a year – about 1.7 million of the six million staff – will get a rise of £250 a year each, but the rest get no pay rise for the next two years. And public sector staff will also start to see their pension contributions increase, rising by an average of three per cent over the next three years. Higher earners are expected to pay the most.

STAMP DUTY

A NEW top rate of stamp duty on homes worth £1 million or more kicks in. Buyers will have to pay a tax of five per cent of the entire purchase price of the property, up from four per cent at present.

EMPLOYERS

EMPLOYERS will no longer be allowed to run schemes where staff can save National Insurance by reducing their salary in return for meals in a subsidised canteen. Staff and employers will have to pay an extra £110 million a year in tax.

ISAS

THE annual Isa allowance rises from £10,200 to £10,680. The allowance for profits free from capital gains tax rises from £10,100 to £10,600, but the inheritance tax nil-rate band remains at £325,000. Maximum contributions into a pension scheme are capped at £50,000, down from £255,000.

HOUSING

A NEW £250 million fund will be launched to support up to 10,000 first-time buyers.

The First Buy scheme will offer loans of up to 20 per cent of the value of new-build properties for those without sufficient deposits. The loans are funded half by the taxpayer and half by the housebuilder. New rules will cap the maximum rent that is paid out as housing benefit for new claimants. #x0D; Rather than being based on average market rents, the benefit will be limited to 30 per cent of average rents in an area.

The maximum will be capped at £250 a week for a one-bedroom property and £400 for a four-bedroom property. Those already claiming will see their benefit reduced from January 2012.

FROM 2012…

THE fuel duty increase delayed from next month takes effect on January 1 next year. This is likely to add about 4p to the cost of a litre, including VAT.

TAXATION

FROM April 6, 2012 the personal income tax allowance for those aged under 65 rises by £630 to £8,105. This will take an estimated 260,000 out of the income tax net and save basic rate and 40 per cent taxpayers up to £126 a year in income tax.

But the slice of income that basic-rate tax is levied on will be reduced by £630 so that 40 per cent tax still starts on incomes of £42,475.

From now onwards, the Government will use CPI not RPI to increase most tax allowances and thresholds. This means these allowances will grow more slowly, meaning that a higher proportion of income or profits is taxed and that more households are dragged into the higher tax brackets. This translates to a tax rise of £105 million this year, rising to more than £1 billion a year in 2015.

But tax allowances for pensioners will continue to rise in line with RPI until the end of this Parliament.

There will be a further clampdown on tax credits, restricting benefit to households with an income of £30,000. On top of this, claims for tax credit can only be backdated by one month, not three. And a family’s income will have to fall by more than £2,500 in that tax year to trigger any recalculation of benefits.

COMPANY CARS

COMPANY car tax rises on April 6, 2012. Cars are taxed as a benefit in kind, using a formula linking the price of each car to its CO2 emissions. The tax bands will reshuffle, reducing the allowable emissions in each band by 5g/km, and increasing the tax on existing vehicles.

.. More than 40 ‘outdated’ tax concessions and allowances are set to be abolished. These include rules allowing the first £36 worth of luncheon vouchers provided each year by an employer to be free from tax. .. There will be a new discount on IHT. Anyone leaving at least ten per cent of their estate to charity sees the tax rate on the rest cut from 40 per cent to 36 per cent.

Higher rates of air passenger duty will kick in. This tax is currently levied at eight different rates, ranging from £12 a head for a short-haul economy trip to £170 a head for a premium class long-haul trip to Australia. It will rise in line with two years worth of inflation from today.

From August 2012 there will be a further rise in fuel duty of inflation plus 1p a litre, delayed from the April.

FROM 2013…

Another restriction on tax credits will be imposed on April 6, 2013. Families will now have to report immediately any increase in annual income of more than £5,000 and have tax credit payments adjusted accordingly. Before this, increases of up to £20,000 could be ignored.

Further increases in company car tax are scheduled to begin, raising the amount of tax.

A new scheme will allow charities to reclaim Gift Aid on cash donations worth up to £5,000 a year without the need to collect declaration forms from each donor. This effectively adds 25 per cent to the value of every penny you throw into a charity bucket.

EXPERTS are calling on the Government to ensure high-growth businesses are given the support they need to thrive, ahead of this week’s Budget.

Analysis by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta), an independent body set up to support and encourage innovativeness in the UK, shows that high-growth businesses – those with 10 or more employees which experience employment growth averaging 20 per cent or more per year over a three year period – do better in a recession than other firms. About six per cent of all firms in the UK, small and large, are defined as high-growth businesses. Nesta’s findings show that between 2007 and 2010, the number of UK businesses growing at more than 20 per cent a year remained constant, compared to the periods between 2002-2005 and 2005 to 2008. This is despite being in the worst recession for 80 years.

High-growth businesses generate 49 per cent of new jobs being created, and are less likely than others to become insolvent, yet according to Nesta, such firms find it harder to access finance than their slower growing counterparts.

Stian Westlake of Nesta says: ‘Ahead of the Budget the Government needs to focus on higher-growth firms, as these are the most resilient and employ the most people. They need to remove obstacles to growth, such as regulatory barriers, invest in a skilled and creative workforce and improve access to finance – while high-growth businesses are typically a better credit risk than many slower-growing firms, the banks are treating them as otherwise. High-growth businesses are often doing things that are different, launching new products or entering new markets, and from the banks’ view this may seem risky.’

He adds: ‘We also believe Government should be using procurement to encourage innovation, by making it easier for small high-growth businesses to tender for Government contracts.’

Will Butler-Adams, managing director of Brompton Bicycles, the company famous for its folding bicycles, agrees. The business, in Brentford, west London, has seen sales grow by 25 per cent to 30 per cent in the last few years, and now sells 28,000 bikes a year. The firm employs 120 staff in the UK and is just about to set up an office in Hong Kong, to sell in China. The bicycles are now exported to 38 different countries.

Will, 36, says: ‘I believe generally less is more – less regulation, less intervention and more allowing businesses to get on with it. However, the Government must do more on procurement. The process of tendering for contracts is so contracted it favours big firms. It needs more simplification so smaller businessescan successfully tender to.’