You could be forgiven for thinking that a government ought to know precisely where it stands when it comes to projected revenues and expenditures. If it didn’t, then how could it make sense of the budget and know where or what to cut to save precious public money? This simple idea must be thrown into doubt by the fact that the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer found himself with an additional £27 billion in projected tax receipts over the next five years. The “windfall” stems from a re-evaluation by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) which believes that borrowing costs will be lower than forecast and tax receipts will come in above projection.
A major part of this “additional” income has been derived from a change in the way that OBR predicts what the government is likely to receive in VAT returns – sort of quantitative easing for accountants, perhaps? In any event, the better outlook gave the Chancellor more room for manoeuvre during his Autumn Statement.
There had been considerable speculation that the Chancellor would announce unpopular cuts to the “tax credit” system which is designed to help the unemployed and families on low incomes, but the better projection meant that this has been left untouched for the moment. It had been expected that £4.4 billion would be cut from these credits. However, government spending will be cut back across a number of departments in the coming years to bring state spending down from 45% (in 2010) to 36.5% of total output by 2020.
A major plank of the Conservative government is that the deficit should be eliminated and the country should “live within its means” within the lifetime of the current parliament. OBR predicts that the deficit will still be £49.5 billion next year and fall to £24.8 billion the following year, hitting a surplus from 2020.