RISHI Sunak’s aid package will save only 230,000 jobs, a study found — as Brits face a £40billion per year tax hit from Covid.
And the new job retention and wage support schemes will not stop 1.8million more roles being axed, said the Institute for Public Policy Research.
The study by the IPPR also suggests the jobs preserved will be a drop in the ocean compared with the total of four million expected to be made unemployed as a result of the pandemic. The monster tax bill warning comes in a chilling separate report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
It predicts that government borrowing this year will hit a level not seen outside the two world wars.
And as the economy shrinks amid lockdown measures, Chancellor Mr Sunak faces a further hit to tax revenues which could easily exceed £200billion, it adds.
The IFS says the UK is on the brink of the highest unemployment since the early 1990s. Mr Sunak has already signalled that taxes will rise next year, saying it will be “tricky” to meet Tory manifesto commitments not to raise income tax, VAT or National Insurance.
The major IFS report, out today, says public sector debt is forecast to be just over 110 per cent of national income in 2024-25.
The think tank adds that even if ministers are content to keep debt at 100 per cent of national income and borrowing at about £80billion a year, that will still require “fiscal tightening” amounting to more than £40billion in today’s terms.
IFS director Paul Johnson said: “Debt, now at its highest level in more than half a century, will carry on rising without action.
“Big tax rises look all but inevitable, although likely not until the middle 2020s.”
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