Britain on track to beat budget forecast as revenues pick up

mystic_trev

Higher tax revenues boosted Britain's public finances in September, putting the Conservative-led government on track to comfortably undershoot its borrowing forecast this year.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/22/uk-britain-borrowing-idUKBRE99L0QN20131022

Aiding the improvement was a 7 percent rise in government revenues. Receipts from the property transaction tax known as stamp duty jumped by a third, reflecting the upturn in Britain's housing market.

Conrad

I've mentioned this in discussion time, not gone down well with Labour guys there.

Bit by bit the new enterprise culture rises up from Labours top down regulatory broth.

grizzly1911

Good old housing market.

Where will most punters find the SDLT from?

Loughton_Monkey

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Good old housing market.

Where will most punters find the SDLT from?

They bung it on the mortgage.

chewmylegoff

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

They bung it on the mortgage.

Please do tell me which mortgage lender will let you do that...

grizzly1911

chewmylegoff wrote: »

Please do tell me which mortgage lender will let you do that...

Perhaps that is why they can't raise a decent deposit and we need HTB.

That would be novel government underwriting finance schemes to finance recoverable taxation.

Next they will be subsidising energy generation projects guaranteeing a FIT higher than market price.

Loughton_Monkey

chewmylegoff wrote: »

Please do tell me which mortgage lender will let you do that...

I have never, ever, paid stamp duty in cash. I've always bunged it onto the mortgage. Even for my first house. After that, why does it matter and who knows anyway?

Typically, when moving, mortgage on old house is, say, £60K on £115K. So I might take out £10K equity for improvements, leaving me £45K equity. New house £180K, plus £5K legal, moving, stamp duty fees, meaning mortgage of £140K.

QED

Milarky

Aiding the improvement was a 7 percent rise in government revenues. Receipts from the property transaction tax known as stamp duty jumped by a third, reflecting the upturn in Britain's housing market.

Yes, but the point is it's an anomaly - a one off - an outlier. The corrected title for the article should have parenthesis as follows:

"Britain on track to beat budget forecast as revenues pick up [for a single month]"

michaels

Um surely what matters is the cyclically adjuted deficit - just cos we are moving to a more positive phase in the cycle more quickly than anticipated doesn't (in theory) mean anything when it comes to whether further fiscal tightening is needed.

Of course this is all theoretical, in reality if the current debt path looks sustainable no govt is going to tighten when the budget is in balance because actually at the top of the cycle we should be running a surplus of 3% or 4% (See for example G Brown and the redefiniton of the business cycle, claiming that even in 2006/7 we were in the down part of the cycle so justifying running a deficit....)

shortchanged_2

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

I have never, ever, paid stamp duty in cash. I've always bunged it onto the mortgage. Even for my first house. After that, why does it matter and who knows anyway?

Typically, when moving, mortgage on old house is, say, £60K on £115K. So I might take out £10K equity for improvements, leaving me £45K equity. New house £180K, plus £5K legal, moving, stamp duty fees, meaning mortgage of £140K.

QED

So you're paying interest on your SDT as well.

Very MSE monkey.

wotsthat

shortchanged wrote: »

So you're paying interest on your SDT as well.

Very MSE monkey.

If you're earning more interest on savings than paying in the mortgage it makes sense to keep the SDT as a debt and put the cash in savings instead.

With low borrowing rates I can't think of many good reasons to pay down debt. The psychological satisfaction of being debt free maybe but that's about it.

Stick around - this time next year you'll be a millionaire.