Raising tax is always politically difficult. But Britain can no longer afford a delay. The proximate cause is a shortfall in the public finances. Likely downgrades to productivity forecasts, spending commitments already announced and a change in the accounting treatment of student loans all mean the government will need to raise funds to meet its fiscal rule of balancing day-to-day spending by 2023. Truly “ending austerity” and reversing the cuts of recent years will cost even more.
Well, yes. Except the tax burden (percentage of GDP that goes in tax) is already at record highs. The shortfall is because they’re pissing away what they do collect.
Still plenty of money for foreign aids though, eh?
And what could be prissier than HS2? I suppose Steve above has an answer to that.
Raising taxes won’t necessarily raise taxes.
‘need to raise funds to meet its fiscal rule of balancing day-to-day spending by 2023’
You have such a rule? It says ‘2023?’
Isn’t ‘spaffing’ the approved term these days?
What bloody delay? Osborne raised taxes years ago. So did Hammond. Tax take rose under both the Coalition and the “Conservative” governments.
@ Steve
Foreign Aid is so small that it is almost equal to a rounding error and *genuine* aid that isn’t supporting our defence or commercial interests is even smaller. David Cameron aimed to increase aid to 0.6% of GDP but it seems that much (?most) of taxpayers’ share of that is just matching voluntary contributions to charitable giving that was happening anyway.
The matching scheme is actually quite sensible – some politician spotted that governments are not very good at picking winners and that attempts to do so involved high costs so it is both cheaper and better to channel the taxpayers’ money through *genuine* charities’ projects that attract money from the pockets of those who have been watching the charity over the years and want their money to do some good.
This also means that HMG pays less in overseas aid that is actual aid than on Parliaments.
They fucking think to piss fortunes away on HSR2 and Irish Sea bridges and talk about raising taxes?
Blojo has truly gone round the fucking bend.
We escape the EU shite and instead of a bright future its to be Shank’s Pony and censored internet while BluLab sucks the globo elites dick?
Time to cancel those fucking subs Theo–and reply like a man. The silence every time I call you on it speaks volumes that you know which Party is the fucking rabble.
John77 – £14Bn isn’t chump change, we could get about 10 new Forth Road bridges every year for that money. Plus, it keeps a lot of woke busybodies in cushy jobs when they should rightly be cleaning the toilets at Costa for a living.
aid that isn’t supporting our defence or commercial interests is even smaller
What defence interests? We’re an island. As for commercial concerns – let them pay their own bloody bribes.
The government has no business borrowing money in our name to give away to foreigners in Foreign – we’re already spending too much on the foreigners in Britain.
Reducing UK Gov’t spending by £50Bn a year would be trivialy easy – shut down every virtue signalling expenditure from DfID, Gift-Aid, DCMS, PHE, Eq&HR, DEFRA…., privatise NHS, Network Rail and
and HS2 Ltd – Boris, BBC etc do keep comparing/equating HS2 with Channel Tunnel which was private sector
Where is Maggie II?
btw I’m a tad low on cash; rather than reduce spending, can I tax the Gov’t by sending them a Pcar Tax Bill?
@john77
0.7% = £14.5bn in 2018 – not a ’rounding error’ sum
“Matching” donations is public donating twice plus bureaucracy cost and should end too. Charities should be doing voluntarily all the Foreign Aid with no Gov’t money
@Steve
+1
@ Pcar
0.7% is less than the rounding error in a UK Budget – look at the argument about the size of Brown’s structural deficit: was it 8% or 10%?
The amount of genuine aid funded by the taxpayer is only part (possibly only a minority) of that 0.7%
Apparently the financial paper of record believes that underlying economic behaviour should be adjusted in response to “a change in … accounting treatment”. FFS.
@ Steve
We’re living on an island that imports most of its food and three-quarters of its oil; we have citizens and investments scattered around the globe and enemies who want to destroy/steal them.
Of course we have defence interests
@john77
Using Gordon “Profligate” Brown as an example to support your argument is fatuous
£14.5Bn is a lot of wasted taxpayer extorted money. It’s more than IHT and Stamp Duty combined. Plus, it doesn’t benefit UK taxpayers, it’s UK money gifted by Gov’t to our competitors
@ Pcar
Firstly £14.5bn is a forecast of what it might increase to in the future if … if …
Secondly it isn’t going to our competitors
Thirdly a chunk does benefit the UK (with Guardianistas screaming about it whenever they notice that it is used to boost UK exports).
Personally, I think that charitable donations should be a matter for individual consciences and they are much less likely to be misused than government funding directed through overseas governments but I don’t regard the foreign aid budget as significant – especially when one compares it with sums wasted by the EU or by governments inside the UK
@john77
£14.5bn was DfIDs 2018 budget
China & India aren’t competitors? Every country is our competitor
It’s throwing money away and gifting my money without my approval to other countries and non-jobs in UK
Majority of UK believe it should end