I think you may be getting confused. You claim with my '
The fact I was referring to was the actual amount that a tax cut costs the public purse if there are no behavioural responses.' whereas what you actually said back in post 151 was
'The one certainty is that by raising corporation tax X amount would raise X amount for tax revenues, that is a FACT. How did your FACT about raising Corporation Tax become one about reducing it? I'm fascinated. Are you sure that you know what you meant?
When you have worked out whether the fact that you were talking about related to cutting or raising tax do let me know, but I will tell you in advance that it is not as you claim that the net effect of a tax change is a
a solid, factual amount, X – Y that can be calculated. Even taking into account behavioural responses and calling that Y it is only ever possible to estimate both X and Y (with Y being particularly hard to estimate with any accuracy) so why it may be a factual amount, it can only ever be estimated.
You are also wrong when you say that the Corporation Tax cuts cost us £16.5 billion in services. In making that claim you ignore the behavioural changes that you acknowledge exist and also ignore the fact (or FACT) that the country is running a budget deficit and so rather than being a loss to public services the best case you could make is that the deficit was somewhere less than £16.5bn p.a. than it would have been.
I see that you are quoting the IFS on Corporation Tax. You miss out the observations that:
In the same way that we would expect rate cuts to be less costly in the medium to long run because lower rates boost investment, we would expect rate increases to be more expensive because they reduce investment which, over time, would translate into the UK having a smaller capital stock.
You miss out that despite now having a low headline rate:
Compared with other countries, the UK has a much less competitive tax base, largely due to a particularly ungenerous set of capital allowances.
You also miss out:
Under current plans, corporation tax receipts are set to form a smaller, and possibly decreasing, proportion of receipts in the future. This is not necessarily a concern. It has long been recognised that corporate income taxes can distort incentives in a number of harmful ways, and they are thought to have a particularly damaging effect on economic growth. Corporate tax is top of an OECD ranking of the most damaging types of tax.
Perhaps most importantly for your argument, you miss out the obvious:
Corporation tax is ultimately paid by people - through reduced pension and savings growth, job losses, lower wages and higher prices.
To be fair, it's not clear whether it is you that is selectively quoting the IFS or whether you just pulled the headline figure from a dodgy Labour Party press release, but either way, selective quoting is a dangerous game.
Here's the IFS on Corporation Tax:
https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/9207
You would
accept approximately 2,113 job losses in return for an increase in corporation tax that would offset the manifesto policy on student? By 'student', I assume you mean the Tuition Fee bribe? I suspect you are not taking the risk of job losses seriously (perhaps working on the basis that you are in public service and so won't be affected - I'm alright, Jez). Come on, give a serious figure -you support the bribe so be clear about what consequences you are willing to accept for it - 2,113 would probably represent the losses from a tiny part of a supply chain if, say, Siemens decided to quit the country or Pfizer got it's hands on Astrazeneca and stripped it.
I think the country has fewer public servants than it is desirable for it have over the longer term, which is why I support growth friendly policies rather than the destructive, short termist, sound bite friendly, anti-growth policies that Labour are offering. That's kind of the point of my involvement in this thread.
How am I trashed by my own source when it says exactly what I said it did? I think you may be confused again. I said that the report
confirmed the progress that had been made in reducing poverty in this country, which progress only faltered after the financial crisis of 2008 and the aftermath thereof, which is what it does say. We are dealing with the consequences of a profound shock to the world economy, coming to terms with the emergence of several powerful economic competitors and, latterly, dealing with the uncertainty surrounding Brexit. Of course times are difficult. In quoting JRF you are, however, once again, selectively quoting and miss out passages such as:
Over the last 20 years the UK has seen very significant falls in poverty among children and pensioners , which begs the question that I ask is why would you want to turn your back on the economic strategies that have delivered that and return to the 'tax, spend, cover your eyes and ignore reality' policies of the 70s.
I like the JRF very much, but is important not forget their agenda when reading their output. They also use 'relative poverty' as measure of poverty, which produces the absurd outcome that doubling the income of everyone in the country would have no effect on poverty rates.