Chancellor lands a bumper tax haul

Yet the economy remains weak and subject to some “Brexity” trials ahead. Emily Hohler reports.

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Some surprisingly cheery reading for the chancellor
(Image credit: Copyright (c) 2016 Shutterstock. No use without permission.)

A "bumper tax haul for January" gave Philip Hammond the "biggest surplus ever recorded", handing him a "boost" prior to his spring statement on 13 March, says Tim Wallace in The Daily Telegraph. The chancellor was £14.9bn in the black for the month, "smashing" the £10bn predicted by economists as record employment rates brought in extra revenue. Public borrowing for the financial year stands at £21.2bn, a fall of £18.5bn on the same period of 2018 to the "lowest level in 17 years".Unfortunately, this isn't the whole picture, says Chris Giles in the Financial Times. "Most data looks worse."

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Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.