Oct 12 2007
Every silver lining has a cloud
It is becoming a fact of life that every labour budget offers fantastic tax cuts from different member of our community (god I hate that word) which are later revealed to have been nullified by swingeing tax rises somewhere else.
Two techniques are favoured: introduce benefits which can only be enjoyed after an Operation Overlord level of form filling which nobody can be bothered to do or create a blizzard of tax changes which confound even experts.
The most recent example is this week where another tax cutting budget has after some analysis turned out to be tax raising with most families facing another £50 tax per week by 2012.
The IFS has successfully analysed the small print of the budget and identified that across a wide range of areas the government will either raise money through fiscal drag or increase it by tinkering with details and numbers.
As with every labour budget - a silver lining rapidly becoming a cloud
