0:00
When I was an adviser to George Osborne
0:02
as shadow chancellor and if we had to
0:04
raise as much money as needs to be done
0:07
today, these are the top three options
0:10
that we would look at. Now, I've got the
0:11
numbers for this from the Institute for
0:13
Fiscal Studies who've written a very
0:15
useful report on tax options for this
0:18
year's budget. To start with, the big
0:20
one is income tax. Now, Rachel Reeves
0:22
doesn't want to have to break a
0:23
manifesto pledge on this, but the sums
0:26
raised would be so significant she's
0:29
going to have to look at it. So, on the
0:30
basic rate of income tax, if you moved
0:32
it from 20% to 22%, that would raise
0:36
around 20 billion. You could also look
0:39
at capping the relief on pension
0:42
contributions at the basic rate. That
0:44
would actually raise around about the
0:46
same amount of money. And then you could
0:47
look at VAT. You could potentially lower
0:50
the overall rate but have it apply to
0:53
more products because if you took
0:55
zerorated goods and added just one
0:58
percentage point the IFS calculate that
1:00
that brings in about 4 billion. So a few
1:03
extra percent on that could raise more
1:05
money even if the overall level of VAT
1:08
were to fall. Those are the top three I
1:10
would look at and most likely all and a
1:13
combination of these would need to be
