Expectations for the Budget have been so downplayed that suspicion is growing in Westminster that George Osborne will pull some kind of rabbit out of the hat tomorrow. If so, could it be a surprise cut in income tax? Here’s the theory one source put to me earlier.
Ed Balls, who always seeks to pre-empt Osborne’s announcements (he called for a freeze in fuel duty before the Chancellor did just that in last December’s Autumn Statement), proposed a temporary cut in the basic rate in his interview in last Saturday’s Daily Telegraph. The shadow chancellor, who has previously called for a cut in VAT and the reintroduction of the 10p tax rate (a measure Osborne was considering before Labour’s announcement), told the paper:
Anything he can do to help low and middle-income families would be better than no tax cut at all. A Labour shadow chancellor says taxes should be cut. A Tory Chancellor says, ‘Over my dead body.’ I can’t remember a situation like that in my lifetime. If George Osborne, in this Budget, were to cut the basic rate of tax, we would applaud him. If that’s all he did, I would be concerned. But, even so, we would say, ‘At last’.
My source suggested that Balls had either learned or guessed that Osborne was planning to cut income tax in the Budget. If the former, the question now is whether Osborne will go ahead with the move. After last year’s disastrous decision to abolish the 50p rate, a 1p cut in the basic rate would be the perfect way to demonstrate that, as Tory MP Robert Halfon recently put it to me, the Tories believe in “tax cuts for the many, not just the few”.
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