Tax expert Richard Murphy has told an audience at the TUC that Britain faces a "revenue crisis" but not a spending crisis. He urged increases in tax revenue.
Tax expert Richard Murphy has told an audience at the TUC that Britain faces a “revenue crisis” and an “unemployment crisis” but not a spending crisis. He urged the Government to seek ways to increase tax revenue rather than cutting public spending.
Speaking at the TUC’s ‘Beyond Crisis’ conference, Murphy presented a series of slides including one (see below) setting out the dramatic fall in government revenue since 2008.
Murphy, who blogs at Tax Research UK, set out that spending must be on investment and not consumption. Left Foot Forward has previously shown how investment in the UK has fallen off a cliff. Murphy also warned of the impact on unemployment of cuts in public spending. He quoted John Maynard Keynes who said in 1933:
“Look after the unemployment, and the budget will look after itself.”
Murphy called for taxes on:
- bank payments within the UK
- empty houses as mentioned in yesterday’s Observer
- the highest paid
- cheating companies avoidance taxation
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10 Responses to “Britain has a “revenue crisis” not a spending crisis”
Nigel Stanley
RT @leftfootfwd: Tax expert tells TUC audience that Britain faces a "revenue crisis" not a spending crisis http://bit.ly/3XkXS #beyondcrisis
Alex
Government revenue increased from 2003 to 2008 because the government increased its tax take through increases mostly in indirect taxes, but also increases in NI and income/corporation tax. The problem is that private sector activity has been declining since around 2003. Subtracting government consumption and transfer payments from total GDP and adjusting for inflation, the rest of the economy is at about 75% of its 2003 value in inflation adjusted terms.
Britain faces “revenue crisis” not a spending crisis | called2account
[…] Britain faces “revenue crisis” not a spending crisis | Left Foot Forward. […]
linda kaucher
The biggest issue is that the jobs jobs jobs that are supposedly being created do not go to UK people under the present structures. The one area where there is urgent investment going in, and indeed one that Ed Milliband has very definitively claimed as a job creation area, that is ‘energy’, is a work area most drastically affected by structures that allow all jobs to go to foreign labour.
I really don’t see the point of these discussions, when a core issue, on which all the rest of it rests, is evaded.
willstraw
Linda – What evidence do you have that UK people do not get the jobs?
Migration has gone down dramatically in the last two years because immigrants can’t get jobs either.