There are two charts here, both addressing the issue of debt, with which both the Tories and Labour are wholly inappropriately obsessed (in my opinion).
The first suggests on various measures that the proportion of government debt to GDP is going to fall over the next few years.
The second suggests, however, that the the government is going to borrow in every year for the rest of the decade.
So, what does this mean? It means that inflation is writing down the value of old debt, which has a fixed value at the time it was issued meaning that it progressively becomes easier to repay as inflation makes the money to do so easier to find. So, the decline in the value of debt to GDP, which Hunt wants us to think is a government success story, is nothing of the sort. It is all down to continuing inflation, which was a government disaster story. The hypocrisy of politicians who think they can exploit economic ignorance knows no limits.
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We keep hearing we have the highest ‘tax burden’ since the war. There are many ways of taxing but I remember higher rates of corporation and income tax. Is it really or is it a selective interpretation?
I appreciate that the question may be one one for another day.
The ‘burden’ is tax as a percentage of GDP
It is high because of the impact on those on lower pay.
It is not to do with rates – which are historically low
VAT and low allowances plus high NIC hit those on low earnings
Hence your work on different ways of taxing wealth.
It would be an interesting thing to compare the amount of taxes raised (adjusted for inflation and GDP) in 2023 and say 1973, and the changing incidence of tax across income or wealth decile. Taking account of rates and allowances.
I think, in the broadest of terms, income tax is down for the higher paid, capital gains tax is down, and corporation tax is down. VAT and NICs are up. And inequality (in pay and wealth) has increased markedly.
It would take a lot of time…
The Resolution Foundation appears to have done some work on this.
https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/app/uploads/2019/11/The-shifting-shape-of-UK-tax.pdf
This was done in 2019 but see pages 25 and 27 and 28 here. And the modelling of marginal tax rates on page 34. And taxes on wealth falling behind on page 39.
Food for thought.
I will take a look