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Election peril

10 February 2015 / Allison Plager
Issue: 4488 / Categories: Comment & Analysis , Admin , Budget/Finance Act

Good times are not ahead, warns the Institute for Fiscal Studies

KEY POINTS

  • The UK’s finances are still weak.
  • Tax increases tend to happen soon after a general election.
  • Council tax reform is preferable to a mansion tax.
  • Quality of tax design is as important as quantity.

The general election is less than 100 days away the deficit is still more than 5% of national income and real spending cuts have been much less than originally planned. As a result whoever forms the next government is going to have to make some difficult choices said the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in its 2015 Green Budget.

As Paul Johnson director of the IFS and an editor of the Green Budget said:

“Mr Osborne has perhaps not been quite such an austere chancellor as either his own rhetoric...

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