Civil servants in the Department of Finance do not want to give their political masters any ideas that would involve spending more money or cutting taxes in the budget. Photograph: PAFrom reading the Tax Strategy Group papers, we can only conclude that the senior civil servants who drew them up, led by the Department of Finance, really did not want to give their political masters any ideas that would involve spending more money or cutting taxes in the budget.
Having already seen quite a few budget kites flown, encouraged by the talk of the billions in budget surpluses, the last thing the mandarins wanted to do was give anyone any ideas for ones they had not thought of already. – just that civil servants are nervous about the longer term implications for the public finances and the risks of overheating the economy.
So the only area examined in detail in the income tax paper was the idea of a refundable tax credit, which would mean that those on lower earnings would benefit from the full value of credits provided against income tax. To say the write-up of this option, supported by the Green Party, was not very enthusiastic, would be an understatement.