personal tax allowance

The Guardian was 'liveblogging' the deal agreed on by the new coalition government last night and if it's correct, which we wont find out until later today, then I fear we will continue to have politics as usual. Why?

A substantial increase in the personal tax allowance from April 2011 with a focus on low and middle income earners, with a "long term goal" of a £10,000 personal tax allowance. There is no a timetable for this, but there is a promise to make further real term steps each year towards this objective. This is described as a "funded increase". It will be funded by taking the money the Tories had planned to use to increase the employee threshold for national insurance, and by an increase in capital gains tax for non business assets to bring it closer to the level of income tax.

For really low paid workers the majority of the money taken from them every payday is taken in the name of National Insurance. Raising the tax threshold but not the NI threshold will make little or no difference to a large number of them, or their employers. To really make a difference both thresholds need to be raised to take people out of the tax system entirely.

We'll have to wait and see but I'm not holding my breath .. .. ..