I usually respect Mr Kaletsky's views but on this occasion I agree with the statement made by Mike in Spain.
I also do not agree with the taxing motorists for the traffic congestion creation schemes that our local councils and the Highways agency seem obsessed with at this time. Create congestion and then charge for it, mmm.

Phil, Lytham,

GB started off by taking £5bn per year from every working man and womans pension funds and finished by doubling the tax payable by the lowest paid working men and women in the country. Great record.

Kevin Henry, Manchester, UK

It maybe fair to say his budget was neutral but that doesn't change the fact that low income families are now worser off. I also don't subscribe to Anatole Kaletsky view that Gordon Brown has improved matters by reducing the distortion effects of tax and removing say a 10% rate or previously the pension funds tax status. He more than any one before him has created a raft of means tested allowances which surely distorts the tax system far more. The personal pension funds of millions have been savaged at a stroke by his earlier tax grab and nothing has been done to help people recover from this. Under ten years of Brown, income tax has remained essentially unchanged even after this last budget. But, Brown in an attempt to try and achieve his social engineering goals has substituted income tax manipulation by adding many stealth taxes including increased NI contributions. Brown might claim these are not really taxes but its affecting peoples pockets and the economy in a bad way.

Mike, Denia, Spain

It was a con because he went for the headline grabbing Income tax cut. It was an attempt to show he was something he most definitely is not - a Tax cutter.
The actual content of the budget became irrelevant.
Mr Brown has had his thieving fingers in my pocket more than any other Chancellor. Not only has he taken more in direct taxes than any other Chancellor he has spent my retirement money too. He has wasted the countries wealth on meddling government. So please give us a break with the praise of GB. The man should be despised for the increase in red tape alone.

David Thijm, Stourbridge, UK

All this discussion is futile. Lets have a flat rate of tax and make sure everybody pays. End of story.

John , Lisbon, Portugal

I must disagree with george Exeter I have never found Anatole Kaletsky to be an apologist for Brown, To the contrary I think he is generally fair and unbiased. Nor am I an apololgist for Brown as I loathe the Labour Party in general and the BB duo in particular. A lifelong Ulster Unionist/Tory

Denver Watt, Osaka, Japan

"And what do they tell us about the political instincts of this century's longest-serving chancellor?"

Since Gordon Brown is the only chancellor of the exchequer so far this century, he is necessarily both the longest-serving and the shortest-serving chancellor in that period of time.

Mark Brady, San Jose, CA, USA

I must disagree with george from Exeter as I have usually found Anatole Kaletsky to be straightforward and unbiased. Certainly not an apologist.

Denver Watt, Osaka, Japan

As usual an apologist for the Government. Kaletsky is the same person who sneered at the Germans for having a manufacturing industry and who always praises the virtuous circle of increasing house prices enabling the consumer to borrow more on his credit card and keep our high personal debt economy running. Alas let us pity those poor Germans who alone in the world have a trade balance surplus with China who in turn buys all those high tech goods that the high personal saving Germans manufacture. The simple fact is Brown has further primed and rewarded the dependency culture with his tax credits and further pushed savers into poverty..What would Katelsky say to someone whom I met recently on return from Berlin who is leaving the UK for Australia. Her reasons for leaving are simple, as a well qualified married couple with skills but (underlined)unfortunately no children ,she and her husband are quite left out of it all the benefits that Katelsky claims Brown showers on the public.

george, Exeter, United Kingdom

There is huge poverty in this country because of the high
cost of living. 40% of people are dependant on tax credits
and government help to keep them out of absolute poverty.
5 million Britons are not working and have little chance of
competing against young highly motivated immigrants.
health, education and defence must be properly funded and we must remain buisiness friendly. The fact that brown has held all this together is a massive achievement
which he is not given credit for. The Tory right do not care
about the 40%, they just want tax cuts for the successful
60%.

Philip, Dorset,

"...small companies and entrepreneurs have benefited hugely from the reduction of capital gains tax...."

No they haven't. Small businesses spending £50,000 a year on plant and machinery AND having someone savvy enough to apply for the relief will see their tax reduced to 15% (are there many of those around?) The rest of this sector, including the growing number of small professional services firms and sole traders requiring only a laptop and mobile phone to carry out their business, will bear the full brunt of the Chancellor's "neutral budget".

Sarah, London,

This "centuy's longest serving Chancellor" will also to be shown to be the worst Chancellor in the past one hunded years. He has increased the burocracy of tax collection, leading to more and more civil servants with their pensions and salaries The disaster of Child Tax Benefits is just one example, the robbing of pension funds another. He has increased borrowing to be paid back in the future.
Anatole Kaletsky is the other best friend of Brown's along with Ed Balls-up who may even become a worse Chancellor than Brown one day.

Gordon, Bramhall, England

The Budget may be neutral as far as total revenue to be collected, but It was far from neutral as far as ALL tax payers are concerned. Small personal taxpayers have lost their 10% rate, for many the only rate they paid. Small corporate taxpayers have lost out as tax rates will go up. All businesses have lost with capital allowances being reduced from 25% to 20% or deleted as far as buildings are concerned. Worst of all is the dispicable treatment of alterations to homes for disabled or sick taxpayers, these were zero rated VAT, now they are at 5%.

Raymond Reid, Haslemere, England

Well said Andrew from Sheffield. It is a fundamental truth that all governments are profoundly crap at everything they do and that every time Uncle Joe or my hopeless council taxes me, a large chunk of the money is wasted. Until the tax burden starts going down and I am allowed to spend more of my money on what I want to spend it on, I shall remain an unhappy citizen of an authoritarian state.

Matt D, Leeds, UK

But was it not Mr Brown who has complicated the tax system in the first place? For example tax credits.

Edward, Fleet,

He isn't a control freak! Come off it! He increased taxation on the less well off by removing the 10p rate. He may well give that back again with increased tax credit, but only if the claimant asks the treasury nicely on the right piece of paper and declares loads of personal information into the bargain.
Big brother has your money, and if you want it back again, kiss his shoe and ask very nicely. Andalways remember the cost of collection and re-distribution increases the size of the civil service - more overhead for the nation to carry. Maybe he can just transfer the drones he made redundant from DWP - or has that one been lost in the sleight-of-hand shuffle as well!

KR, Stockport,

Here's a fool who disagrees that there's only one source of tax. Income tax is basically a cost to business. If income tax was reduced to a zero rate tomorrow, you'd find wage increases scaled back or even frozen pretty damn quickly. Conversely if you increased the tax rate on a specific trade or profession in isolation you'd find either wages would go up or businesses in that industry would cease trading. The supply and demand for labour is a pretty basic market in which employers pay the minimum required to afford their employees a standard of living which attracts and retains the skills necessary for the effective running of the businesses.

JP, Uk, Uk

"The taxation of savings has been greatly simplified by the reduction of fiscal benefits for pensions". How silly of me, I saw the taxation of pension funds as a disincentive to save, the precursor of the collapse of the final salary scheme, and the mother of all stealth taxes (how will we ever know what pension we would have had if they had not been taxed?). I now know differently thanks to Mr Kaletsky. It isn't daylihght robbery, but simplification.

Kevin Egan, Chelmsford,

Strange column.

Surely a Chancellor wanting to simplify the tax system and encourage more people to work would greatly increase personal allowances? This would enable many low-paid people to pay no income tax at all. Such a move would be far more efficient than the current tax credits scheme, taking money to then give back, to then take again as they've been overpaid.

Keith Wallis, Liverpool, UK

It is hardly suprising that Gordon Brown is "this century’s longest-serving Chancellor". He is this century's only Chancellor thus far. Perhaps Mr Kaletsky is living in the past?

Ben Wilkinson, London,

The effort required to navigate the tax system is, by itself, a distortion as it is totally non-productive and generates no wealth. For some small companies goverment tax administration can take up to 50% of the time of an employee (from personal experience).
Further, to describe the destruction of the occupational pension system as reducing tax distortions is laughable.

This Chancellor has inflicted long term, systemic damage to the economy which his predecessors (and my children) will have to pay for.

Graeme Stewart, Milnathort, Perthshire

What is so unacceptable is the sheer dishonesty of the whole thing shown by the way information is presented in such a selective way.
There are many examples. One glaring example is the pretence that Natonal Insurance is not a tax. So the tax take for a basic rate taxpayer on the amount paid by the employer is 40.6%
The Government talks about. 22%
Grossly misleading.

John Harmer, Brentwood, Essex

Mr Brown has largely simplified his own previous complications - the cost of collecting tax and distributing credits is ill-considered. Council Tax, not considered at all in the budget, is in many cases the largest single tax payment and adds to the notion that taxes are unfair, regressive and with no appeal for the taxpayer - as all parties promise to do more and their ambitions always require more revenue.

Peter York, Tonbridge, Kent

Brown has spent the last ten years complicating the system and now he is a reformer? I fail to see how his increase of small company taxes and his increases in allowances for them to compensate is simplifying the system either. As to the notion that a move from capital intensive industry to services is good for the economy, umm, how do we pay our external debts? We now have a colossal balance of payments deficit with no sign it will come down. We make so little now that we probably will never be able to pay for what we get, end eventually the lack of a solid underpinning to the economy will show with a collapse of sterling, rampant inflation and a massive recession in order to rebalance things.

Neil Murphy, cromer,

"Employment has grown rapidly since 1997, suggesting that tax credits for the working poor have reduced the disincentives to work ". Wow, so unemployment has fallen because of the tax credit scheme? The same tax credit scheme that is widely disparaged for being woefully under utilized and misunderstood by those who are entitled to it?

I doubt it.

Pete, Liverpool,

Being "this century’s longest-serving Chancellor" is not much on an achievement in a century that has seen no other Chancellor.

F Calder-Smith, Twickenham,

Don't forget that increasing taxes on alcohol and tobacco increases the incentive for black market activity. And while black markets are the most efficient of all markets, they are also corrupt and corrupting. Perhaps Mr Brown knows this.

James , Canberra, Australia.

I am astounded by this partial description of Browns chacellorship. To suggest that he has increased tax efficiency is bizarre. Brown has focused throughout his chancellorship on the politics of tax - i.e. raising as much as possible without us noticing. The idea that in this budget he was straightforward that there was no tax cut is laughable - even now Denis McShane in the Telegraph is claiming that it was a tax cutting budget. Brown claims that average families will be better off - but the tax burden keeps rising - and as any fool knows ultimately there is only one source of tax - individuals - either through direct tax on their income, tax on what they spend, what they save or through the prices that companies charge to cover the cost of tax and regulation. What you fail to remember is that the greatest distortion of all is to replace individual decision making with state diktat through ever increasing proportions of tax take.

Andrew, Sheffield,

It was Brown who introduced the 10per cent band so I really cannot see what credit he deserves for increasing this to 20per cent and an honest presentation would have given this as much prominence as the basic rate reduction.
How you reconcile this with helping the poorest in society is beyond me(and please do not talk about tax credits)
I suppose Mr Kaletsky has to differ from the view of the majority in order to have an article worth publishing.

COLIN , Hong Kong,

What ? I am really sorry but you state that the budget has the aim of simplification.

What colour is the sky on your planet ?

Are there more or less pages in the tax code following Mr Brown's speach ?

Do people who previously benefited from a 10 per cent rate of tax now have to fill in endless forms to claim back a 'credit' for what was theirs by right a day before ?

Are you awaiting a letter, Lord Kaletsky ?

Mark, London,

You've been had. You mention Brown's preamble get-out clause that the budget would be neutral when he knew that his reputation for deciet would mean we would rather wait and see. The 2p-off claim at the end with no details of how it would be taken back was meant to get Cameron and headlines to say that the 2p-off was genuine. He did not reckon that journalists would immediately check the red book. Brown had an opportunity to draw a line under 10 years of spin, have the papers full of 'Honest Gordon' headlines and scupper the Tories. Sadly, honesty is a concept that Brown cannot get his head round.

R Mason, LONDON, UK

Whilst I do not like to see people smoking the use of the tax system to try to discourage them a) doesn't work - every sixth form student of economics knows that the demand for cigarettes is inelastic and b) (which is far worse) is highly regressionary, because the tax on cigarettes takes up a far higher proportion of a poor person's income than that of a rich person, money which would be better spent on their children, their homes and their diets.

martin culliford, torquay, UK

Anatole Kaletsky overestimates the financial awareness of the average voter. Gordon Brown deliberately flourished the standard rate tax cut at the end of his speech for maximum, misleading impact. Several newspapers e,g, the Sun fell into the trap by heading this cut only to revise its view a day later. Moreover it concealed the higher tax to be paid by lowest earners who don't claim complicated tax credits.

R A Connell, Guildford, UK

The abolition of the 10% tax band is not a simplification. Lower rate tax bands are a simple way of encouraging the work of the poor, requiring no expensive form filling and checking.

This tax increase disincentivises them, and thrusts them towards the world of means tested benefits/tax credits, with the accompanying army of expensive administrators, and the demeaning psychological effect to go with the application. Many have more dignity than to apply.

It is shameful that the media has allowed the chancellor to get away with marginalising the working poor in the name of a bogus simplification.

Mike Evans, Misomer Norton, UK

Presumably the tax credit on dividends encouraged us to "put our savings into economically unproductive tax shelters" causing "distorting effects" on savings and investment.
This like the rest of the argument does not stack up. The removal of the equity tax credit has contributed to a gigantic distortion. The loss of faith in equity based investments has lead to both individuals and corporates (especially pension funds) investing in both property and bonds (with the recent addition of REITs for property both these asset types incur no tax for pension funds) at ruinously low rates of return. The resulting damage may take decades to unwind.
Another example of Brown's meddling is small company taxation. Zero percent corporation tax anyone?
Or Tax Credits....

Come on Anatole....

Patrick Hall, Sevenoaks, Kent

If you were on 12,000 to 14,000 pounds a year and a single man, you would not be championing the achievements of Brown. Tax for these people is about to go up, so much for Brown's socialist ideals or for that matter his appreciation of fairness because you can barely live in the UK on this sort of salary. But who cares about people on these sort of salaries, almost nobody, including you.

ADScott, Bangkok, Thailand