When Philip Hammond stands up to give his budget on Wednesday, this is what you are likely to hear: economic growth has been, and will be, stronger than expected after the Brexit vote. That is quite a contrast to the recent trend of confessing on budget day that the deficit will be higher than previously thought. But here’s what the chancellor will not tell you: living costs have gone up and will continue to do so. There have indeed been successive rises over recent years to the tax-free personal allowance – the amount someone can earn without having to pay income tax. “The past two or three decades have seen inflation rates for lower-income groups in society rise faster than inflation rates for higher income people,” he says in the book.

Source: The Guardian March 05, 2017 13:14 UTC