It is generally the case that a Chancellor takes the opportunity to raise taxation in the first Budget of each parliament and introduce the most far reaching tax reforms in the first or second Budget of the parliament.

We can (hopefully) assume that the main tax raising Budget of this parliament is now behind us as the tax policy decisions in George Osborn’s July 2015 Budget are estimated to collect over £29bn in additional taxation between 2015/16 and 2020/21.

This compares to decisions involving cutting spending totally £45bn over the same period, so it also appears that we can safely assume that the coalition government approach to closing the fiscal deficit requiring 80% of spending cuts and 20% of tax increases no longer applies.