I've seen painful impact of Rachel Reeves's first Budget on Yorkshire businesses - here's what she needs to do this time: Matt Travis

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

56% : While last year saw the Government's commitments on Nationasl Insurance ditched, this year income tax has been the focus of much of the pre-Budget rhetoric.
52% : An effective rise in income tax is likely to be every bit as unpopular as the decisions made last year, but it may offer the Chancellor some of the vital headroom she needs to bring forward her infrastructure investment plans, reduce the national debt and help to address the very real productivity challenges faced in both the public and private sectors alike.
51% : Simply tinkering around the edges does little to fill the Treasury coffers, but, as the removal of winter fuel allowances and the introduction of inheritance tax on family farms, and trading businesses showed last year, such measures often do more harm than good.
49% : What the Chancellor cannot afford to do is to loosen the already-stretched public purse strings further and raise more tax and increase spending.
48% : The decisions made last year have directly contributed to the stubbornly high levels of inflation, and it was inevitable that the tax rises imposed on businesses last year have adversely affected the lives of every working person, entrepreneur and pensioner.
48% : No-one likes handing over their money to the taxman, but the reality is that the deficit between public spending and tax receipts continues to widen.
46% : Although a plan for a direct increase in income tax appears to have been abandoned, the Chancellor may now opt for extending the freeze on income tax thresholds which has the potential to raise around £8.3bn a year.
46% : That leaves income tax.
45% : My hope is that if the Chancellor does address income tax, she will use it to reform Britain's notoriously complex tax system.
41% : If the Chancellor is to reduce the national debt then she faces a stark choice: she must either raise taxes or cut spending.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.