Timing is everything

HJ

Hmm.

Much as I support cuts in corporation tax, it is a tax on profits, so those companies whose profits are plunging, or who are making a loss (i.e. those suffering most in the downturn) won't benefit. Those that are doing well will.

At this stage, a cut in employers NI contributions would help all companies and make employing people cheaper - surely a better idea at a time when we all expect unemployment to soar.

YoYo

The lack of business on the stock market is playing havoc with corporation tax receipts.

And as unemployment goes up, there's more welfare to pay and less tax on wages to pay it with.

What an irony that all that state money was forked out on Northern Rock purely to save on a small leakage of labour votes in the North East and now the lack of money in the kitty means a loss of the Labour vote everywhere.

The failure to say business is business, Northern Rock will have to swing has just added to the misery of Darling's balance sheets. Labour can wriggle all it likes, but it has no way out of this.

What a farce.

Alfred T Mahan

HJ 2.47 pm is on the right track - what is needed is not just a cut in Corporation Tax but unwinding of all the petty difficulties put in the way of employing people in the UK. NI, Health and Safety, stupid enforcement of daft EU Directives, over-restrictive employment law, and plain daft CRB regulations all need to be trimmed back. all those would help to save jobs and ameliorate the recession - at nil cost to the government. Any chance of Labour doing any of them? Is the Pope Catholic?

Ed

Interesting statistic for you - something I worked out the other day. Raising the personal allowance to £11,000 per year for all UK taxpayers could be paid for by cutting overall spending by just 6%.

Think what universal appeal and impact that would have?

And nobody can really tell me that a cut in spending of 6% would really have that big an impact. That's a rounding error.

Sir Buffy de Vere Spoofington, Bt

As a great admirer of young Osborne I always enjoy the approach of the conference season, because I know it means George is going to make a speech promising tax cuts.

But not, I hope, an "unfunded" tax cut? That would be irresponsible. And dangerously right wing.

Of course, the shrewd thing would be to cut corporation tax, raise other business - sorry, I mean "green" - taxes and hope people are too stupid to notice.

At least we can relax in the knowledge that these cuts won't be funded by anything as brain-dead as expenditure cuts.

Trumpeter Lanfried

Given the political will, every single government and local government office in this country, without exception, could make savings of 10% overnight. The impact on services would be negligible.

Unfortunately, as soon as you suggest savings of any description this government comes the raw prawn, hinting that 'unfunded tax cuts' will leave the dead unburied, nursery schools boarded up, and dustbins emptied only twice a year.

Anthony a

Whatever Labour say about spending cuts doesn't matter - noone is listening to them anymore.

They treat voters like idiots and now can't see that voters have made up their mind to turf them out at the election for wasting nearly all of that extra money they took from us.

TGF UKIP

More specious Speccie cheerleading for Boy George. Of course, as a good social democrat, what he is most definitely not proposing is any cut in tax take merely a rearrangement thereof. As he indicated in his interview on the PM programme the "cut" was to be paid for via an abolition of allowances. "Tax simplification" as BG says - and believe that when you see it. The civil servants in HMRC do not exist to simplify tax.

Whenever the Cameron Tories do talk about tax the fanzine inevitably gushes about tax cuts and equally inevtiably the "cuts" turn out to be no such thing and the motive behind the "cut" is invariably one any left of centre party could embrace. In business tax it is to stop compnies moving abroad and on personal tax it is for reasons to redress poverty and social injustice. Motives all very fine for SocDems but what about the good old supply side reasons to reward work and enterprise. But hey! That would be a conservative argument.

Meanwhile, what an interesting, and you would have thought unarguable post, Ed. One, however, destined to fall on the deafest of deaf, Cameron Tory ears. And nice one Sir Buffy - I envy you your touch.