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I know the Budget is pretty much always the chancellor looking like he's giving with one hand while people don't notice what he's taking with the other, but George Osborne's latest statement seemed to be a particularly fine example of that tradition.
In the positive pile is the fuel duty freeze, which I admit was a surprise because continued fairly low fuel prices would have given the Government the opportunity to nick a little back for little political damage.
There were a few other bits and pieces of positive business news, but also a series of threats to the cost of running company cars. The capital allowance changes, for example, which were reasonably predictable, although for most fleet operations getting cars below 110g/km isn't too challenging any more.
However, the mention of salary sacrifice, without giving enough detail to provide any clarity as to what the Government is really focused on, is distinctly unhelpful at best, as is the decision not to reveal where benefit-in-kind bands are going to head for 2020/21.
My personal feeling, which I've aired before in this column, is that the Government is sailing dangerously close to taxing company cars to the level where they could, from a driver's perspective, be perceived as not enough of a benefit to be worth retaining. Especially when combined with the ludicrous decision to retain the 3% diesel supplement on BIK.
Given that the company car market is the driving force behind the adoption of new, greener and safer vehicles, that would be a pretty typical Government move - getting greedy and not really understanding the market, and so killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
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