George Osborne's budget is described as 'clearly regressive' by respected fiscal thinktank Institue for Fiscal Studies.Britain's leading independent tax experts today flatly rejected the coalition government's claims to have shielded poor families from five years of austerity when they described George Osborne's emergency budget as "clearly regressive".
In a direct challenge to Treasury claims that the package of spending cuts and tax increases announced in June was fair, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said in a report that welfare cuts meant working families on the lowest incomes – particularly those with children – were the biggest losers.
The IFS said it had always been sceptical about Osborne's claim that the budget was "progressive" but added that this instant judgment had been reinforced by a study of proposed changes to housing benefit, disability allowances and tax credits due to come in between now and 2015.
Passing judgment that is likely to make uncomfortable reading for the Liberal Democrats, the IFS concluded: "Once all of the benefit cuts are considered, the tax and benefit changes announced in the emergency budget are clearly regressive as, on average, they hit the poorest households more than those in the upper middle of the income distribution in cash, let alone percentage, terms."
Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, has argued that the budget represented "progressive austerity" by sparing the poorest families from the brunt of the attack on the UK's record peacetime deficit.
Yet all the while the rich get richer, and pay no taxes, and the bankers get their bonuses. Same old Tories it seems.
