CBI director-general Richard Lambert is pressing chancellor Alistair Darling to avoid ‘Budget theatricals’ and give a short, six-paragraph speech next week.
The chancellor should also propose to delay all the proposed business tax changes, it adds.
The CBI is today calling on chancellor Alistair Darling to postpone all proposed business tax changes
Accountancy Age, 03 Mar 2008
CBI director-general Richard Lambert is pressing chancellor Alistair Darling to avoid ‘Budget theatricals’ and give a short, six-paragraph speech next week.
The chancellor should also propose to delay all the proposed business tax changes, it adds.
In the six-paragraph alternative speech Lambert suggests the chancellor say that pronounced economic uncertainty means it is impossible to make ‘credible judgements based on the near-term outlook’, and that there will anyway be a need to revisit the government's three-year spending plans next year, given the continued deterioration in the public finances.
‘The only worthwhile tax changes Mr Darling could make would be to postpone for a year ill-considered and rushed changes to capital gains and non-doms tax, to give the many affected individuals a decent period to plan,’ Lambert said.
He said the CBI forecasts that, contrary to the Treasury's optimistic projections, and on current spending plans, government borrowing would total a high £45bn in 2009-10, and the current account would not move out of deficit until 2011-12 as opposed to the forecast 2009-10.
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