A top team of financial analysts from Garbutt & Elliott, the York accountancy practice in Monkgate, led by tax partner Michael Backhouse will be working with the Evening Press on Budget Day to bring you a real understanding of how you are likely to be affected.

If the Garbutt & Elliott predictions are right the first Budget of the New Millennium could spell good news for York as the city of science and innovation.

New firms being nurtured in York's bioscience "incubators" at the Science Park at York University - indeed fledgling businesses throughout North Yorkshire - could be given a further fillip by some of the predicted new tax incentives for enterprise.

Further venture capital help through, for example, corporate venturing, together with a proposed new Enterprise Management Incentive Scheme for providing tax breaks on business shareholders is likely to inject new energy into the region's small and medium sized firms.

And if the government's Internet strategy works out, then lower "hook up" costs it is trying to foster and abolition of stamp duty on small share trading over the 'Net should boost the e-commerce revolution in North Yorkshire.

Not such good news, however, will be forthcoming from Gordon Brown on one of the biggest economic issues for North Yorkshire - the beleaguered state of agriculture, says Garbutt and Elliott.

Nor, say the firm's experts, is there likely to be a sign that Mr Brown is preparing to help another of the region's biggest industries - tourism.

There is unlikely to be any let-up in the value of the strong pound against the Euro. While that makes it cheaper than it has been for years for Britons to holiday abroad, it makes Yorkshire a dauntingly expensive destination for foreign tourists.

These are the predictions.-

Top ten racing certainties

1. Betting duty rates to remain unchanged!

2. The basic rate of income tax down to 22 per cent from April 6, 2000. The top rate will remain at 40 per cent. The 10 per cent rate has already been extended to savings income, and will apply to capital gains from that date. Personal allowance will be up by £50 to £4,385, but the married couple's allowance will be abolished from April 6, 2000. It will be replaced by the Children's Tax Credit, giving tax relief of a maximum of £416 a year for families with children, but this will not come in until the following year April 6, 2001.

3. Employer's National Insurance Contributions on all employee benefits will be set at 12.2 per cent from April 6, 2000,r but will drop to 11.9 per cent a year later on April 6, 2001.

4. The starting point, or earning threshold for employees paying NICs will rise in two big hikes, initially from £66 per week to £76 per week from next April and then will be brought into line with the personal allowance for income tax by April 2001 which means that it will be at least £87.

5. Details of the carbon dioxide emissions tariff - the new method of taxing company cars from April 2002 - will be announced.

6. The period for which shares or other business assets must be held to qualify for the maximum taper relief for capital gains tax to be reduced from ten years to five.

7. Two new forms of tax-favoured employee shares schemes will be introduced. These are the All Employee Share Scheme, which is most likely to be of interest to larger or quoted companies, and the Enterprise Management Incentive Scheme, designed for smaller, start-up firms. This could hugely benefit the bioscience explosion in York. This may lead to the existing types of share scheme being phased out.

8. Expect exact details of a new form of tax incentive for companies investing in start-up ventures to be announced for the first time.

9. Businesses using temporary staff through agencies will be expected to pay VAT on the full cost, rather than just the agencies' commission.

10. Good news for Web-conscious self-assessment taxpayers. There will be a £10 discount for filing their tax returns over the Internet. Small businesses filing either Pay as you Earn or VAT returns over the 'Net will get a discount of £50 from April 2001. Do both and you benefit by £100.

Each way bets

The income tax starting rate of 10 per cent will be extended, perhaps to cover the first £2,000 of taxable income.

A controversial five per cent VAT charge will be levied on new houses, and VAT may be applied to road and bridge tolls.

Brace yourselves for an increase in the car fuel scale benefit for employees with company cars - a hike of perhaps as much as 33 per cent.

The percentage of votes that a shareholder must have to qualify for the business asset taper will be reduced from 25 per cent to ten per cent, and may now apply to any level of shareholding for those who work full time in the business.

Companies will for the first time benefit from Capital Gains Tax taper relief, as individuals do now.

Inheritance tax threshold will increase from the existing £231,000 to £300,000.

Worth a flutter

Based on the assumption that the Chancellor will want to pull a pre-election rabbit out of the hat expect the announcement of a reduction in the basic rate of income tax to 21 per cent from April 6, 2001, with a target of 20 per cent from April 6, 2002 (which some cynics might argue will be after the election).

Increase in stamp duty on houses priced at over £250,000 from 2.5 per cent to, say, 3.25 per cent is imminent. This is likely to be preferred to the sledgehammer to crack a nut process of increasing interest rates which in the process of depressing the runaway housing market in the south east, adversely affects industry and jobs throughout the country.

On this will there be a double whammy by removing the exemption in the Capital Gains Tax on private houses sold for more than £250,000?

Extension of the period that a donor has to survive after making a potentially exempt transfer to be sure that no Inheritance Tax is due, from seven years to perhaps 12 to 15 years.

Outside chances

Stamp duty to be abolished for stock market small share trading on the Internet, to encourage private investment.

Business premises benefit from a reduced scale of stamp duties on property.

Abolition of inheritance tax, but combined with a charge to Capital Gains Tax on assets passed on as an inheritance after death. A hot potato, this, but Chancellor Brown is known to resent the fact that when you die all your assets chargeable to capital gains are passed on scot free

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.