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[KerrAvon]

I’ll try to be clearer. By FACT I mean the amount that if you are the IFS, you take the amount of corporation profits at one point in time and perform a calculation of how much public revenue would be lost if (from that amount) if you cut 1% (or any other %) off the corporation tax. I’m taking it as a calculation based at any one point in time. This I presume is how the IFS arrived at the amount of 16.5 billion per year it could cost the public purse to cut 1% off the corp tax rates BEFORE (sorry about having to emphasise my key words using caps, I’m trying to help you understand) behavioural responses come into play. I acknowledge that at this point, the 16.5 billion becomes at estimate and I’m happy, if it makes you happier to refer to it as the IFS does, as an estimate.

So – I repeat, before behavioural responses, the IFS estimates that a 1% cut (or cut, as you like to say) costs the treasury £16.5 billion pounds. I accept that such a cut is likely to have a positive economic impact to some extent and would agree with the IFS points generally. But what I and others on here are primarily concerned about is to what extent does the benefits of such cuts to the economy:

1. Make its way back into public revenues to compensate for the huge amount of money lost annually to our services? You can provide no evidence of positive benefits to public services to justify such a cut to our purse. To be clear, I’m not denying that there will be reciprocal positive impacts to business and employees for such, but the world I see developing around me in recent years, in my work, in schools and from people who work in key services, the evidence is that money is being cut from services that is not coming back down. This is the fundamental aspect of what we are trying to get over to you. If these cuts don’t somehow lead to improvements in our public life and services, then your claims that it generates wealth doesn’t go far enough, and I think this is the crux of where you and us are so opposed.

2. Help to compensate for the job losses to the public services that such cuts have made in recent years. You blandly squirm around my question by saying that we have fewer public servants than it is desirable, but as you are pushing me to answer ridiculously unanswerable questions, I ask again: how many job losses in the public sector are you willing to accept for a further 1% cut on corporation tax?

Re: JRF foundation and the your rather comical observation that “selective quoting is a dangerous game”. Do you not see the irony in the FACT that you have read both reports and have done exactly that, using key quotes to back up your own world view? (I refer back to my initial reservations about re-entering this debate – that we would just end up quoting sources at each other, again!). But as it happens, I think it is fair for the JRF to point out (and for you to highlight) that there has been an improvement in poverty levels from the mid 90s, but crucially this stopped circa 2012 and since then the JRF have warned of a serious downturn:

• 400,000 more children are living in poverty than in 2012

• 300,000 more pensioners are living in absolute poverty than in 2012

• “Very little progress has been made in reducing poverty among working age adults”

When was the first corporation tax cut? 2010 when it was cut from 28% and has incrementally gone down every under successive governments to it’s current 20%. And if the IFS is estimating amounts to the effect of £16.5 billion per 1% cut, might it be that the huge amount being lost to the public revenues (with no evidence of it’s recovery and trickle down into either public life or services), might the amount of cuts, and the impact on the society we see around us be related?

So when you said back on post 151: The one certainty is that by raising corporation tax X amount would raise X amount for tax revenues, that is a FACT, you were actually referring to the possibility of being able to calculate the effect of a tax cut as the IFS have attempted to do... right... erm... glad that you cleared that one up...

It's possible to estimate the effect of a tax cut before the behavioural changes triggered by it take effect.

Dealing with your numbered points:

1. The effects of austerity that you refer to are the consequences of this and the previous government seeking to deal with the budget deficit and consequential growing national debt. I do not need the JRF or anyone else to tell me that the effect of that policy has been damaging for many people within the country, but failing to deal with the deficit is not a realistic option. For the reasons set out by me (and by the IFS), cuts to corporate taxes are likely to stimulate economic activity and through that raise levels of employment, employment taxes and consumption taxes such as VAT. That increased economic activity or growth will serve to cut the deficit and will eventually allow for an easing to austerity. On the other hand, the Labour policy of raising corporate taxes is, for the reasons set out by me (and the IFS) an anti-growth policy. Implementing them would be an act of treating the symptom of the problem rather than dealing with the problem itself and, worse than that, would ultimately exacerbate the problem as economic activity, employment and tax revenues fell as behavioural changes started take effect.

You state: You can provide no evidence of positive benefits to public services to justify such a cut to our purse. This immediately indicates that you are ignoring the reality of the situation as the cuts were not to ‘the public purse’; they represent, in the short term, merely a slower cutting of the deficit. As for evidence, you have repeatedly asked for the same. Whether that was an argumentive gambit or born out of a genuine lack of understanding of the inability to give the same is unclear. What it is possible to show is that a record number of people are in employment in the UK and it is also possible to predict (subject to the consequences of Brexit) that the national debt (as a % of GDP) will start to fall next year.

2. I did not blandy squirm in response to your question. I gave my opinion. Squirming is what you have repeatedly done in response to my request that you quantify the number of jobs that you would accept for such Labour policies as the tuition fee bribe. You are happy to say what you want, but shy away from saying what price you would pay for it.

Re: the JRF. My summary of the report at the outset was an accurate one. It confirms the progress that has been made in cutting poverty over the last twenty years and then confirms the except of austerity. You, on the other hand prefer to draw upon only the latter. You may recall that MMM tried to do the same thing when he first linked to the report.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not unsympathetic to your aims, but you appear to want easy answers when they are simply not available. The bigotry of the likes of Roly and MMM, who seem to believe that anyone who does not support current Labour policies is a dyed in the wool supporter of feudalism and morally inferior to them, is about as far from reality as it is possible to be. I (and, I am certain, the vast majority of people in this country, whatever their politics) want to see well funded public services and a welfare system that acts as a safety net (as opposed to a life style choice for some). That’s the reason why I do oppose Labour – their policies are short termist, short sighted and driven, in part, by ideology rather than reason, and would ultimately cause for more harm than good were they to be implemented.