UK The Treasury is on course to miss its public borrowing target by a wide margin, official figures showed on Thursday, as the recession hit the revenues of many taxes and left the public finances far adrift of pre-Budget report forecasts made as recently as late November.
The public sector usually shows a large surplus in January because tax revenues are flattered by income tax paid on bonuses and self-assessment returns and bumper corporation tax from financial sector companies. But this year, January public sector net borrowing was £3.3bn, representing the worst January figure since self-assessment was introduced in 1996-97. Total tax receipts in the first 10 months of the financial year were £10bn lower than in the same period of 2007-08, while the chancellor’s forecast for the entire year is for a drop of only £3bn.
