A new 50 per cent top rate of income tax has been announced in the Budget by Alistair Darling, the Chancellor. Personal allowances will also be fully withdrawn for those with incomes over £100,000 from next April. Outlining the scale of the problem, Mr Darling announced that he expects that the economy will contract by about 1.6 per cent during the first quarter of this year, and that GDP growth will be about -3.5 per cent for the year. The recession has forced the Chancellor to rip up his economic forecasts made in the Pre-Budget Report in November, in which...