Nick Clegg: squeezed middle will be hit if tax cuts are accelerated Leading accountants have said that the plan by Nick Clegg to speed up the increase in the income tax allowance will hit the squeezed middle, not the wealthy as Mr Clegg has suggested. On April 6, the threshold at which people will start paying income tax will rise by £630 to £8,105. According to HMRC every £100 in the Personal Allowance, will cost the Treasury £490m. If the process is accelerated to increase the threshold in one go to £10,0000 the Treasury would need to find another £9.3bn. Mike Warburton at Grant Thornton said that there was not enough rich people to cover a bill of that size and that there would be little choice but to increase VAT or basic rate tax to help finance the plan. He said: "The squeezed middle will have to take the hit." Mr Warburton said that the Treasury could find £9bn either raising VAT to 22pc or raise the basic rate of income tax to 22pc. He added: "Given the economic climate I'm not sure that Nick Clegg's plan is workable at this moment." Mr Clegg has hinted that the mansion tax could be one way to recouping the money, but Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of taxation the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, said that this will also hit the squeezed middle. What happens to the hard working family who bought their house in Dulwich for £100,000 twenty years ago and it's now worth £2m - how are they going to afford to pay the tax? Nick Clegg said that Ministers must go "further and faster" as the pressure on household finances reaches "boiling point," the Deputy Prime Minister. "Ordinary, hardworking people" need a "rapid response," he said.