After the Budget, the questions for George Osborne

RT @leftfootfwd After the Budget, the questions George Osborne must answer about his tax & spend plans http://bit.ly/azREQq

RT @leftfootfwd: After the Budget, the questions George Osborne must answer about his tax & spend plans http://bit.ly/azREQq

RT @leftfootfwd @jamescowley ..Qs George Osborne http://bit.ly/azREQq <We are taking the caravan abroad & will decide when we get there.

great post RT @leftfootfwd After the Budget, the questions George Osborne must answer about his tax & spend plans http://bit.ly/azREQq

RT @leftfootfwd After the Budget, the questions George Osborne must answer about his tax & spend plans http://bit.ly/azREQq

ABSOLUTELY RT @leftfootfwd After the Budget, the questions George Osborne must answer about his tax & spend plans http://bit.ly/azREQq

Tough questions for the Tories RT @leftfootfwd After the Budget, the qs Osborne must answer about his tax & spend plans http://bit.ly/azREQq

RT @GeoOsborne: RT @leftfootfwd @jamescowley ..Qs George Osborne http://bit.ly/azREQq <We are taking the caravan abroad & will decide …

RT @leftfootfwd: After the Budget, the questions George Osborne must answer about his tax & spend plans http://bit.ly/azREQq

RT @leftfootfwd: After the Budget, the questions George Osborne must answer about his tax & spend plans http://bit.ly/azREQq

RT @leftfootfwd: After the Budget, the questions George Osborne must answer about his tax & spend plans http://bit.ly/azREQq

RT @leftfootfwd: After the Budget, the questions George Osborne must answer about his tax & spend plans http://bit.ly/azREQq

RT @houseoftwits: RT @leftfootfwd After the Budget, the questions George Osborne must answer about his tax & spend plans http://bit.ly/azREQq

RT @leftfootfwd: After the Budget, the questions George Osborne must answer about his tax & spend plans http://bit.ly/azREQq

So after Darling cynically failed to answer the questions that matter in the budget, all eyes are on Osborne.

I fully expect that we will reach polling day without any politicians spelling out how they are going to repair the economy that Labour has so thoroughly destroyed.

RT @leftfootfwd: After the Budget, the questions George Osborne must answer about his tax & spend plans http://bit.ly/azREQq

Why are all the comments in these articles just RT of the damn article. It gets really annoying after a while when you want to scroll down to get peoples views and all you get is a load of regualars RTing.

Why did the Tories not let George Osborne respond to the Budget..? Or is that a rhetorical question?……

Rob – I couldn’t agree more!

Questions for Osborne from @leftfootfwd. http://trunc.it/6nswi

In response to your question Liz, it is commons tradition that the leader of the opposition, rather than the shadow chancellor responds first to the budget in the house.

Osborne’s comments are just a series of unfunded half-baked comments.

Mr Sensible – thanks for the clarification – I am a bit rusty on Parliamentary protocol! Shame though, it would have been great to see GGO wobble like jelly!

RT @leftfootfwd: After the Budget, the questions George Osborne must answer about his tax & spend plans http://bit.ly/azREQq

Truly Will Straw is an enemy of the working class if he thinks a tax on jobs is a good idea. Just about anything would be better than increasing NIC, which will permanently deprive about 90,000 people of jobs in 2012, and a similar number in each of 2013, 2014, and so on. So by the next election this one tax rise could have put over 300,000 people on the dole. How can this possibly be a good idea?

Wasn’t a great performance by Osborne, but at least he was prepared to be accountable to the people. And at least he’s basing the 80/20 cuts/taxes on proper research from the OECD. Will Straw seems to be ignoring the evidence base and seems to be basing his support for Labour’s 67/33 on nothing more than wishful thinking, when the evidence is that 67/33 will damage the economy unnecessarily. But then he has the luxury of not being one of those people who will be thrown out of work by that extra bit that gets taken out of the economy in the difference between 67/33 and 80/20. He might want to think of the people who will have their lives destroyed by his wishful thinking.

Liz, I think DC did plenty of wabbling for Osborne.

And El Sid, perhaps you can tell me how Osborne plans to fund reversing these tax increases?

The trouble is they make a lot of noise and say nothing.

I love how it’s the view of a “non partisan blog” to lambaste a politician who has said that he will reveal plans within the next week, but their guy in Government, who in a BUDGET (once more for emphasis; A BUDGET) said next to nothing compared to previous budgets and for what is desperately required.

If you want to be a partisan subsidiary of the Labour Party, at least be man enough to admit it.

[...] too great by Mr Darling and co. A shame, but no great political hit taken; Mr Osborne’s attempts this morning to distinguish his own vague plans from those of the government were even weaker than could have [...]

Mr Sensible – I don’t speak for Osborne, in fact I’m not even a member of his party. Given that he hasn’t even said that he’s going to reverse the increase in job tax, it would be surprising to hear him saying how he’s going to pay for this thing he hasn’t proposed yet. But no doubt he will have a modest proposal for single mothers to sell their babies to be eaten by hedge fund managers or something.

Personally – I would reverse the increase. In fact, if I was Chancellor, we wouldn’t be looking for ways to inflict £9bn/year of extra taxes on a struggling economy, because I wouldn’t have wasted money from the structural deficit on a one-off reduction in the price of plasma TVs that created a boost of at most 30k jobs for one year. And I’m not just saying that with hindsight, at the time I had a list of several things that would have made for a more efficient stimulus with greater long-term benefits.

However, we are where we are. I would treat this £9bn just like any other £9bn of the structural deficit. I think we can agree that the priority is to minimise the damage on the economy, no? In turn that means an 80/20 split of reductions in spending and tax. In some ways, I don’t care _where_ the £1.8bn of extra tax falls, just about anything would be better than taxing job creation. But the simplest way to do it would be to replace a penny of employer NIC with a penny on income tax, thus giving employers the flexibility to easily pass on their saving to employees or create new jobs as best suited their needs. I don’t like increasing income tax, but it’s still less bad than increasing the job tax.

In fact if I was Chancellor, this would be small scale stuff, I’d rip up most of the tax system and redesign it from scratch. A long-term aim would be to get rid of employer’s NICs altogether, you could try to do it counter-cyclically, say 1% in each year that the ‘economically inactive’ number are forecast to be >7 million. I’d merge employee NI and income tax – these days there’s little to distinguish them so you might as well just be honest about it and call it all income tax – plus turn coucil tax into local income tax. Gets rid of another bureaucracy and matches tax better with the ability to pay. I’d increase the threshold to £8k-ish initially (and ideally ultimately to £10-11k) to reduce the marginal tax rate on those going from benefits into work, paid for by synchronising the VAT rate with France and Germany, up in the 19-19.6% range.

And a whole load of other changes, but that’s really by the by. The question was asked about the £9bn of job taxes, a complete overhaul of the tax system is going a bit beyond a “mere” £9bn….

At the moment it would be better to tax just about anything than tax jobs. If you’ve got to raise £9bn from somewhere then even 2.6p on the basic rate of income tax would be less bad than increasing employer NICs. There’s certainly logic in synchronising our VAT rate with that of Germany and France in the 19-19.6% range. It’s not nice, but it harms the economy less than a NIC rise.

In fact, the question would be

Of course, it w

El Sid, I believe Osborne has said he wants to scrap it, but hasn’t said how he would fund his pledges.

And on VAT, I believe Ken Clark did support it and now the Tories have a go at it.

That is how all over the place they are.

I would venture to suggest that increasing VAT rates again might do more damage to retail.

Without the VAT cut and the rest of the stimulous our economy would be in more trouble.

Question 1 after the election (if Tories win): george now you’ve messed things up, how long do you intend to stay?

Vote Labour……… !

Um, cutting a tax on jobs is not a “cut”.

Beardy bloke on a bike. Is this the best Labour can come up with?

It’s a logical mistake, nearly always made by politicians and their enthusiasts, to equate “reduced increase” with “cut”.

[...] themselves “progressive conservatives” but does this stack up in practice? Do their economic policies genuinely help create jobs and reduce inequalities? Will their foreign policy, for example over [...]