Alex Williams emails: I exchanged on a flat last Friday, I'll complete in a week. George Osborne just saved me £4200 in stamp duty, he has my vote!

Is getting everyone talking. Stand by for a flurry of views...

Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology correspondent

"Man from Deloitte @UKBudget, external team tells me Google tax will be difficult to implement before international tax agreements are changed"

Law firm Eversheds says this about the new tax designed to stop firms diverting profits offshore to avoid tax: "The new diverted profit tax is a bit surprising: the UK is clearly taking a lead here and putting its marker down: effectively jumping ahead of the OECD BEPS initiative. Quite how it will operate will remain to be seen. Sceptics may think it is just a headline grabber."

UKIP economic spokesman Patrick O'Flynn MEP accused George Osborne of resorting to "smoke and mirror politics" to pretend the UK's budget deficit was under control. Mr O'Flynn said the coalition "lacked the appetite to restrain pending" and described the bill for foreign aid and investment in alternative energy as "huge and unaffordable".

Douglas Fraser
Business and economy editor, Scotland

tweets: , external."@ScotTories attack gap between new Stamp Duty + Scots Transaction Tax. For £350k home: England £7500, Scotland £12,300. #AutumnStatement" Big difference indeed.

Image source, PA

Capital Economics emails saying the stamp duty changes could inflate a section of the housing market: "Reforming stamp duty land tax from a slab to a graduated system is certainly an improvement, and should give a short-term boost to housing transactions. But it will also give another boost to overvalued house prices (at least those beneath £1m), and offer no lasting benefit to first-time buyers."

Kamal Ahmed
BBC Business editor

"Treasury says technology tax, external will need legislation. Will be laid before Parliament next Weds along with "technical consultation""

Katie Fox emails: How is this any good for the housing market? It just makes the rich richer. I am a manager of an estate agents where most of our properties are between £200-550k. At the moment the dreaded leap between from 1% to 3% causes a problem for those unfortunate sellers in that bracket. How will making it now either 2% or 5% help move that market? It will simply encourage less people to buy (or sell).

SNP Treasury spokesman Stewart Hosie argued the statement showed "why the SNP are right to call for more powers for Scotland", saying what the chancellor had outlined was "merely a continuation of a failed austerity programme".

"Tory policy has strangled the recovery and with £75bn of cuts to come we are on track for a decade of austerity," he added.

Andrew Smith in London emails: Rich Hinchliffe (14.25) has probably misunderstood the new stamp duty rates. To end up with a 66% increase in stamp duty, he would have to buy a property for well in excess of £10m.

Professor Philip Booth, programme director at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: "Almost every measure in the Autumn Statement made the tax system more complex, or involved spending promises motivated by interest groups at the expense of the long-term economic interest of the country."

He also described the proposed sovereign wealth fund for the north of England as "completely misguided" and called for any shale gas revenues to be used to reduce taxes or government debt.

Anthony Reuben
Head of Statistics, BBC News

"OBR: 60% of cuts in spending on public services to come in next Parliament, taking it to lowest for 80 years by 2020."

Am I better off under these new, stepped stamp duty rates? Find out here, external. Quick as a whippet, is HMRC.

The Conservative MP for Ealing Central and Acton tweets, external: Great to hear £2bn more for NHS confirmed in Autumn Statement. £1.2billion funded by bankers' penalties to upgrade GP surgeries.

Image source, Getty Images

Rules allowing banks to offset losses made in the financial crisis against future profits will be tightened and banks could pay some £4bn extra in tax. But the industry body the BBA is putting on a serene face. Chief executive, Anthony Browne, says stoically: "Banks contribute more than £25bn each year to the nation's public finances - enough to pay the salaries of around half a million nurses. It is absolutely right that this important industry pays its fair share of tax, but it is important to note that where banks have offset losses they have done so legally, just as all other businesses can."

"We have been disappointed by earnings growth but there are tentative signs that that is turning around," Mr Chote said earlier. But he added the OBR doesn't expect earnings to hit pre-crisis levels until nearly 2019.

Find out here. Personal finance's golden boy, Kevin Peachey, answers your main questions.

"Councils have been urging government to overhaul business rates and remove the obstacles which prevent us from supporting high street shops, small firms and new start-ups as much as we would like to. It is encouraging news for business that the chancellor has listened," said Councillor Claire Kober, chair of the Local Government Association's Resources Board, in response to the announcement of a business rates review.

In the Commons, MPs were getting a bit grumpy that the legislation underpinning changes to stamp duty has been introduced so quickly. William Hague, who's in charge of the parliamentary timetable, stressed that MPs will get a chance to debate the measures in more depth on Thursday.