Government sees January tax surplus

Luseac

Luseac

Luseac

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The UK's public accounts were in surplus in January after a strong rise in income tax receipts.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported the public sector net borrowing measure had a surplus of £3.735bn, higher than expected and the largest surplus since July 2008.

January is traditionally a month in which a surplus is recorded, as a range of income tax bills fall due.

However, a deficit of £1.266bn was recorded in January last year.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12534370

Whilst January is traditionally a month in which a surplus is recorded, it wasn't possible last year. This can be nothing but good news.

The Government has also received the praise of the US treasuary Secretary:

Timothy Geithner told the BBC that he was "very impressed, as just one man looking from a distance, at the basic strategy that he's adopted".

He said Mr Osborne had been handed "problems not created by this government".

But he said the chancellor had "locked his government and the coalition into a set or reforms that are very good".
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12531102

I look forward to Ed Balls' response and the other Deficit Deniers on the front bench of the opposition.
 
Luseac said:
I look forward to Ed Balls' response and the other Deficit Deniers on the front bench of the opposition.
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Mr Balls will nodoubt say that the tax surplus is due to the "excellent" financial management of the last government. He will never admit to the biggest labour economic balls up of all time.
 
Let's watch how many people who blamed the coalition for the economic contraction last quarter try to attribute the surplus to Labour...

Good news after last year's disastrous January deficit...
 
Luseac said:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12534370

Whilst January is traditionally a month in which a surplus is recorded, it wasn't possible last year. This can be nothing but good news.
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Good news indeed, however I'm not sure why you appear to be giving so much credit to the current government. The tax bills which resulted in the surplus were for all of 2010 for which the current government were only in power June onwards, so at least half the credit should go to the previous government.

Luseac said:
The Government has also received the praise of the US treasuary Secretary:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12531102
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Funny how he appears to be saying one thing and doing the exact opposite. I suggest it would be bad form for a foreign finance minister to criticise the chancellor in an interview with the BBC, so am not surprised he's said this. I suspect his real views are closer to what he said in Davos:

At the Davos-based economic forum earlier this year, Mr Geithner had said that, in the case of the US, rapid, drastic spending cuts were "not the responsible way" to cut budget deficits.
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Meanwhile we with our "very good set of reforms" are staring down the barrel of a double-dip recession and 2.5million unemployment and rising with youth unemployment at historic highs.
 
Well at least Labour got half a year right, how many years were they in power again...:rolleyes:
 
scorza said:
Pre-empting the facts doesn't make them invalid.
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Why are you so keen to present positive opinions about labour as fact, yet refuse to acknowledge either their role in the public spending crisis or the massive damage they did to the country in 13 years?
 
Dolph said:
Why are you so keen to present positive opinions about labour as fact, yet refuse to acknowledge either their role in the public spending crisis or the massive damage they did to the country in 13 years?
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Because I only criticise Labour when they deserve it and they aren't the ones most responsible for the global financial crisis and subsequent recession. I will for example criticise Labour for introducing rules that let Barclays only pay 1% corporation tax in 2009 (which presumably is part of the reason we didn't get a tax surplus in Jan 2010). You probably think that's a good thing though.
 
scorza said:
Because I only criticise Labour when they deserve it and they aren't the ones most responsible for the global financial crisis and subsequent recession. I will for example criticise Labour for introducing rules that let Barclays only pay 1% corporation tax in 2009 (which presumably is part of the reason we didn't get a tax surplus in Jan 2010). You probably think that's a good thing though.
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Labour didn't introduce rules that let barclays pay only tax on their UK profits (it was 1% of global profits, a lie made up by the Guardian, so we'll ignore that figure as they wouldn't all have been taxable in the UK no matter what). The rules about carrying losses forward have been in place a very long time and make perfect sense to any rational individual.

I also note you didn't actually address the point I made. I didn't mention the global recession (although Labour's failed regulation system really didn't help, nor did the agreements to requirements around CRA usage, or the removal by Labour of housing costs from the inflation figures). I specifically said Labour's responsibility for the public spending crisis, which revolves around them running a substantial structural deficit throughout a sustained boom and using it to create and expand a client state and import several million labour voters... Half of the doubling of the national debt that occurred under Labour happened prior to the recession...
 
You realise that a big drop in GDP, as happened in the worst recession in living memory, has quite a big impact on the deficit right? Public spending is not the issue however much you'd prefer to pretend is is. The deficit only became a problem as a direct result of the global economic crisis when tax receipts dropped off a cliff and a fiscal stimulus became necessary.

Seriously, this isn't complex economics - stating the increase in national debt without the corresponding change in GDP is a mistake I wouldn't expect from an A-Level economics student.
 
meghatronic said:
Proof the economy was recovering, Labour was on the right track, etc etc etc.
:o
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Rubbish. You are all wrong. Any accountant will tell you otherwise.

With the introduction of the new 50% tax band, company owners and shareholders took massive dividend payments this year on which the tax was due to be paid in January 2011.

I know several who increased their dividends by over a £1m from the normal dividends of £200K to £300k and hence having £400,000 of extra tax each to pay this January.

In fact, I was only saying last month to a colleague that if the Government didn;t announce a surplus in January then the economy really was ****** and we all best bail out of the country as soon as we can.

Of course next January all these people will be paying hardly any tax so expect a massive decificit.
 
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scorza said:
You realise that a big drop in GDP, as happened in the worst recession in living memory, has quite a big impact on the deficit right? Public spending is not the issue however much you'd prefer to pretend is is. The deficit only became a problem as a direct result of the global economic crisis when tax receipts dropped off a cliff and a fiscal stimulus became necessary.
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The deficit was a problem before, you just ignore it because you genuinely seem to believe that money grows on trees.

The idea that you should not run a deficit in a boom is basic economics.

Seriously, this isn't complex economics - stating the increase in national debt without the corresponding change in GDP is a mistake I wouldn't expect from an A-Level economics student.
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No, stating debt as a % of GDP when GDP is on the rise and is therefore constant is a scam, because we don't have to pay it back as a percentage of GDP, the amount borrowed is absolute, irrespective of GDP. Indeed, that's the whole point now, as Brown's boom ended (even though he'd abolished boom and bust), the real damage of labour's fiscal incompetence started to snap into focus for everyone.
 
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