Tax rises to blame for slowdown, BofE says
Mervyn King pins blame for retail slowdown on Gordon Brown
The governor of the Bank of England has blamed the chancellor for the high
street downturn.
In a move that will cause consternation at the Treasury ahead of the
pre-Budget report, to be delivered on December 5, King said in comments reported
in The Times that the rising tax burden had caused a slowdown.
‘One factor [in the downturn] is the quite sharp rise in the ratio of taxes
to household disposable income,’ he said. ‘That ratio has gone up by almost two
percentage points in the past two years.’
King added that ‘it’s not surprising therefore that with that slowdown,
households spent less.’