.png)
.png)
This is one column that I hope is out of date by the time you read it. Most of our editorial is written about a week before the magazine is published, and as I write we still don't know when the Budget will be.
I think that is disrespectful to the profession. It feels rather like waiting outside the office of a self-important business tycoon, who is always at least fifteen minutes late in order to impress on you that his time is more valuable than yours.
Although the scramble to produce an overnight bulletin is not as widespread as it used to be, the announcement of the Budget still sparks off a flurry of logistical planning — not least in the offices of tax publishers — and we need to know the date.
Most people I speak to think that the Budget will be on 16 March. For House of Commons procedural reasons it is more difficult for MPs to delay the Chancellor when the Budget immediately follows Prime Minister's Questions, which is why it used to be on a Tuesday and is now normally on a Wednesday.
However, the House does not rise for the Easter recess until Thursday 24 March, which raises the horrible possibility of a Budget on 23 March, with no time to discuss it (or to produce an issue of Taxation) before Easter.
Assuming Parliament comes back at all after Easter it will only be to tie up the loose ends before dissolving for an election — one loose end presumably being a short Finance Act, just to keep the wheels in motion.
The Ides of March?
He could go for another day - Tuesday 15th? Or could it be earlier? The first rumours were that it would be early next month, perhaps 2 March. You would have thought that if it were going to be, it would have been announced by now.
However, when I rang the Treasury press office while writing this item, I was repeatedly told that it was normal to give about two weeks notice of the Budget.
That is simply not true, and I found it very surprising that three different Treasury press officers had the same faulty perception of what has happened in previous years. In the past five years, the shortest notice we have been given was three weeks, for the 2001 Budget.
You may want to speculate on what event happened in June 2001 and is expected again in May 2005, I couldn't possibly comment…
In 2000 we got over six weeks notice. 2002 was a special case because of Mr Brown's personal circumstances, but we were told on 28 January that the budget would be on 17 April. In 2003 we had five weeks notice, and last year over six.
When I put this to the Treasury press office the response was that this showed that there was no pattern to the amount of notice given. What it actually shows is a pattern of at least a month, if not a month and a half, except in an election year — and even then we got three weeks.
I'm not sure which would be worse: to have a budget so close to Easter that there is no time for any meaningful consideration of it before the election is upon us, or to have it on 9 March, or even 2 March, with no time to prepare.
I am sure, however, that if the traditional Parliamentary Question has not been put and answered by the time this issue is published, the profession should start complaining vigorously.
Since this issue of Taxation went to press, it has been confirmed (with three weeks notice) that the Budget will be on Wednesday 16 March at 12.30pm.
