Have government finances hit a surplus because of bad billing?

[Image: The Guardian.]

[Image: The Guardian.]

There is a certain amount of scepticism running around Vox Political at the announcement that Coalition government finances hit a surplus of £8.8 billion in January due to a “better than expected” rise in tax receipts.

George Osborne was pilloried for his “worse than expected” tax receipts only a short while ago, and it seems highly likely that this has prompted him to order HMRC to do something about it.

Clearly they haven’t done anything about tax avoidance or evasion – it would be silly to expect that from Gideon.

Perhaps they have been wrongly billing people for more than they owe.

This seems more likely. Here at Vox Towers a bill for £25 hit the screen (not the mat – it was emailed). You might think that’s not a bad amount; that, clearly, this household made a little more than the £9,440 tax-free personal allowance for 2013-14 (the tax year being billed).

But Vox Political hasn’t made anything like that much money. We didn’t clear the tax-free personal allowance at all.

The government still billed us.

Now, according to the ONS, self-assessed income tax receipts were £12.3bn in January, an increase of £1.7bn, or 15.6 per cent, compared with January 2014. How can anyone at Vox Political have faith in this figure, having been billed incorrectly?

How can we have faith in any of the other figures spewed out by the Coalition government today?

We can’t.

That’s why this government has to go.

We just can’t believe a word that comes from it.

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6 Comments

  1. Richard Sage February 20, 2015 at 1:18 pm - Reply

    The MSM wont tell you but the reason this years January surplus was up so much is that it includes 2.1 billion from the Asset Purchase Facility. This is interest that the government pay on the bonds bought through QE by the Bank of England. The BOE promptly returns this to the Treasury. They have decreased the deficit by 40bn so far in this way.

    • Mike Sivier February 20, 2015 at 1:27 pm - Reply

      Really? Is there a link to a site where we can all see the evidence for this? I’d love to do an article.

  2. Jeffery Davies February 20, 2015 at 1:26 pm - Reply

    George and carney rtu ids mcbay greyling have all done so much damage can it ever be fixed has fiddlin figures hiden death rates bungled tax evasions and the taking away of our justice for the plebbs yet not many teling it has it his they all a bunch of crooks who swindled taken bribes taken backhanders and yet they still in power jeff3

  3. hstorm February 20, 2015 at 4:24 pm - Reply

    They get pilloried for fake followers on Social Media, and next thing we know Owen Jones ‘just happens’ to have loads of fake followers that he never had previously.

    They get pilloried for failing to collect adequate tax receipts, and next thing we know they ‘just happen’ to have a surplus.

    The problem the Tories have when they try to cheat their way around a PR fiasco is that they do it so soon after the event that everyone can tell straight away that it must be a set-up. Sign not just of dishonesty, but also of panic.

  4. Jim Round February 20, 2015 at 5:02 pm - Reply

    HMRC have a track record of errors going back well over five years;
    http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/public-sector/2010/01/post-18.html
    SSDD.

  5. Florence February 22, 2015 at 1:39 pm - Reply

    Looking at todays and previous Speye blog, it occurred to me that some of this windfall might be from the re-assessment of those forced off JSA into self-employment. HMRC are apparently demanding tax-credits back from those they deemed to have not earned enough to claim to be self-employed. This was predicted when the Job centres started to push this ruse. How many will be made destitute and/or homeless with this sudden debt to HMRC?

    Will HMRC chase any through the courts to be criminalised for “fraud”?

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