Tax receipts have underperformed in recent years. If that changes, the public finances will start to look healthier. There is tentative evidence of such a change, as David Smith reports.
One swallow does not make
a summer and one month’s healthy tax revenues do not make a trend. There was however something in the latest official figures to suggest that the pessimism over public finances that characterised the general election campaign may have been overdone. Numbers showed that public sector net borrowing in the first month of the new fiscal year was £6.8bn; this was £2.5bn lower than a year earlier and in fact the lowest April figure since 2008 when the financial crisis had yet to reveal the extent of...
