KEY POINTS:
Somehow the time never seems to be right for personal tax cuts. Either the Crown's accounts are not as strong as they look, or they are strong but they won't stay that way.
Or - and this is the latest version - the Government can clearly afford tax
cuts but the economy can't. We would only spend the money.
And the Reserve Bank already thinks we are spending too much. It would raise interest rates again and that would push the dollar higher and hammer the export sector and we don't want that, do we?
Michael Cullen's assiduous hosing down yesterday of expectations about the magnitude of personal tax cuts when they come is a response to a resoundingly clear message from the Reserve Bank on December 7.
Further stimulus from fiscal policy - the balance of taxation and Government spending - on top of what is in the pipeline from the last Budget could increase pressure on inflation and trigger another rate rise, governor Alan Bollard warned.
Dr Cullen's comments carefully deprive Dr Bollard of an excuse for an interest rate hike in the New Year, if that is what he wants to do. But the risk of a bumper Budget for the 2008 election-year remains, and that is what the Reserve Bank has to worry about.
There have already been a string of tax cuts announced since the last Budget, such as breaks for savings vehicles like superannuation schemes and for employers' contributions to workplace savings schemes.
The planned carbon tax was scrapped, and some inflation indexation of income tax thresholds (the chewing gum tax cut) is still budgeted for.
A few hundred million here, a few hundred million there, it all adds up.
The forecasts now include $1 billion more in next year's Budget for the business tax package the Government is committed to under agreements with United Future and New Zealand First.
Add the prospect of even modest personal tax cuts or threshold adjustments and there is enough stimulus there to keep Dr Bollard nervous.
Nervous enough, economists warn, to keep interest rates high all through next year.