Government borrowing now certain to overshoot target – yet again

Last Updated: January 22, 2016By
It will take a large influx of tax receipts in the first two months of 2016 to meet the OBR’s £73.5bn forecast. Fat chance! [Image: Toby Melville/Reuters].

It will take a large influx of tax receipts in the first two months of 2016 to meet the OBR’s £73.5bn forecast. Fat chance! [Image: Toby Melville/Reuters].

If anyone thinks government borrowing between January and March is going to be limited to £600 million, please let us know which planet is your current home, so we can all visit. It must be great there.

The idea that the UK’s wealthiest taxpayers will help is ludicrous – all their money is tied up in Dutch Sandwiches, it seems.

As for the self-employed – most of us are working for much less than the minimum wage. This Writer certainly doesn’t expect to reach the threshold at which a person starts paying tax, when I submit my own return later this month.

Let us not forget – of course – that if borrowing does overshoot the end-of-year target, it won’t be the first time.

In fact, borrowing has exceeded every single prediction ever made by George Osborne.

When he became Chancellor, he told us the UK’s finances would be in surplus by April 2015, nearly a year ago. How optimistic that was!

Since then, the only predictable outcome has been that Osborne’s borrowing predictions for that year, and those following, would increase as each successive claim was proved wrong.

The reason? Tory economics doesn’t work.

You can’t build an economy by cutting it back.

After nearly six arduous years, George Osborne has yet to learn the lesson.

But then, he’s not suffering as a result of his mistakes. We are.

The Office for National Statistics said on Friday that public sector net borrowing – excluding banks – increased by £7.5bn in December versus £13.5bn in the same month a year ago, revised from £14.2bn.

This took the cumulative total for the financial year to £72.9bn, down from the £83bn seen for the same period last year, after November’s figures shocked analysts by showing a 10% rise in borrowing.

Analysts warned that this level failed to put the government’s finances back on track to meet the April target.

It will take a huge influx of tax receipts in January and February from Britain’s wealthiest taxpayers and the country’s 4.6 million self-employed workers to meet the forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility of £73.5bn.

Source: Government borrowing lower than expected in December, figures show

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No Comments

  1. Dez January 22, 2016 at 5:36 pm - Reply

    The Tax Office must be gagging for tax cash I have never had so many on-line tax form deadline chasers from them…nearly daily.. The rich will never cough up their contributions their Companies pay for personal tax advisors as part of their perks to keep their tax to a minimum. As for Ossies economics knowledge I hope, after Jeremys PMQ Snipe at the Moron about his lack of basic maths, there are also plenty of Economics teachers coming along despite incurring huge Uni debts. Whatever figures they produce I for one I no longer have any faith anymore in their lies whereever they come from.

    • Mike Sivier January 22, 2016 at 6:31 pm - Reply

      More or less daily, those HMRC emails. I’ve had them too.

    • Florence January 22, 2016 at 11:47 pm - Reply

      If economists don’t teach the current orthodoxy, aka voodoo neocon fantasy economics, they don’t keep their jobs. Anecdotal evidence is this rot has reached school teaching, too.

  2. daijohn January 22, 2016 at 6:13 pm - Reply

    I think the simply answer is that George has mixed up the difference between deficit and surplus – come on be fair – anybody could do it! except my dog who knows when her bowl is empty and when it is full.

  3. David Woods January 22, 2016 at 6:21 pm - Reply

    Let’s not forget Osborne flunked economics at university, so all his ‘inside info’ will be coming from his banking buddies and we all know how good they are at figures don’t we or at least changing them to suit their own personal needs! How can we not trust them; look they get million pound bonuses for a ‘job well done’!

    The country is now run by criminals and incompetents! I shall leave it to the reader to determine for themselves Who is who!

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