Government Budget

Introduction

Budget is a financial statement of the government's planned revenues and expenditures for the fiscal year. The main sources of current revenues, as shown in Fig. 18 (a), are taxation, principally income and expenditure taxes, and National Insurance Contributions. The main current outgoings of government expenditure are the provision of goods and services (principally wage payments to health, education, police and other public service employees), Transfer Payments (old-age pensions, interest payments on the national debt, etc.) and social security benefits (Ackoff, 15). The budget has two main uses:

it forms the basis of the government's longer-term financial planning of its own ...