Hollowing of tax base will lead to bitter recriminations (again)

We have re-arrived at recently discarded policies where swathes of the workforce were excluded from paying little or anything by way of direct taxation, Gerard Howlin

YESTERDAY’S budget was a continuation of an embedded trend of having ever more public expenditure, depend on an ever-reducing tax base. Individual measures were modest. Many were simply inconsequential. That reflected the necessity of accommodating unprecedented political diversity. Some will quibble at the bittiness of initiatives that could have been targeted at fewer, more concerted measures. But that is what we, the people, voted for, and in that respect, we have exactly what we deserve.

It is the cumulative trend of policy that matters, however.