经济学人下载:英国2011年财政预算,束手束脚

Yet he seemed rather cool on big changes to the tax system. The Treasury will scrap 43 of the 47 tax reliefs identified as ripe for abolition by the Office for Tax Simplification (OTS), a body set up by Mr Osborne last year. That will remove over 100 pages from a tax code that has grown larger than India’s. But those reliefs are mostly redundant: they enlarge the tax code but do no real harm. The more radical OTS proposal to merge the tax and national-insurance systems will require “a great deal of consultation”, said Mr Osborne; it could take years to implement. Such wholesale reform is easier when there is money to throw around to compensate losers, as Lord Lawson once noted.

至今他对税制改革似乎得心应手。英国财政部的简化税收办公室（OTS）由是奥斯本去年组建的一个机构，OTS宣布将47项减免税项目中的43项废除。此举将在纳税手册中删除超过100页，这都超过印度的整本税册了。但此优惠没什么实际意思：虽然税单很长但是不伤皮毛的居多。比较激进的做法是，OTS提出了合并某些税收和国家保险系统，但奥斯本表示这还需要“大量的调研和磋商”并说可能要许多年时间才能实现。当年的财政大臣劳森亦曾指出，当有足够资金来补偿受损者并做到面面俱到，这种改革重组并不是难事。

The shortage of cash means this budget was a limited one. The size of the deficit and Mr Osborne’s commitment to shrinking it tied his hands. The deficit-reduction plan is front-loaded: more of the pain of adjustment is planned for the coming fiscal year than any other. Given the economy’s fragility, he could have postponed some of the discomfort and settled for higher borrowing in 2011. Instead he made a spirited defense of his plan A. Long-term interest rates are close to those of thrifty Germany, he said proudly, even though Britain’s budget deficit is bigger than in Portugal, Greece and Spain, countries that face far higher borrowing costs.

现金短缺意味着这个预算方案是束手束脚的。赤字规模和他当初削减赤字的承诺，使奥斯本无法大刀阔斧。赤字削减计划摆在他面前：调整将带来更多的痛苦，其负效应将在新的财政年显现出来。鉴于经济的脆弱性，他或许可以增加2011年国债，把某些预算改革案推迟进行。但相反地，他没有退缩并背水一战。他自豪地说，英国长期国债利率和节俭的德国相接近，尽管英国的预算赤字远高于葡萄牙、希腊和西班牙，但这几个国家的借贷成本都远高于英国。

He did not mention that a run of bad inflation figures (up to 4.4% in February) has made a fiscal U-turn trickier. Anxiety about the impact this year’s fiscal tightening will have on the economy is one factor that has so far deterred the Bank of England from raising interest rates. Three of the nine-strong monetary-policy committee voted for an increase this month. Any easing in the fiscal squeeze could easily tip the balance towards a rise.

预算中他并没有提到2月份通胀数据达到了4.4%，这个糟糕的数字使财政状况急转直下。整个财政年紧缩政策冲击所带来的市场焦虑，是妨碍英格兰银行加息的一个原因。与此同时，九强货币政策委员会投票决定了其中三个货币本月加息。对财政紧缩政策的任何放松，都有可能打破平衡，而最终带来进赤字增加。