Coalition raises pay thresholds
THE UK’s tax-free personal allowance will be raised to £10,600 next year and the higher rate threshold will rise from £41,865 this year to £42,385 next year, it emerged yesterday.
Announcing the changes, chancellor George Osborne said the personal allowance increase was the first step towards his goal raising it to £12,500 so that “people working full time on the minimum wage pay no tax at all”.
The boost to the top rate threshold was the first “in line with inflation for five years”, Osborne said, and was a “down-payment on our commitment to raise the higher threshold to £50,000 by the end of the decade”, he added.