With the weekend about to start, you might want to read Robert Peston's latest blog before drawing up any long-term spending plans.
The BBC's business guru says Alistair Darling will announce that tax revenues are down £40bn when he delivers the pre-budget report on Monday.
The chancellor will unveil tax cuts and spending increases "equivalent perhaps to as much as 2% of GDP", Peston says. He adds:
But he will also announce deferred tax rises and deferred cuts in public spending - to kick in when the economy has recovered a bit.
When would that be? Maybe 2010, maybe 2011.
If he fails to announce such debt-reduction measures, there could be very strong downward pressure on sterling and a corresponding damaging rise in the cost for the government of borrowing ...
So which taxes will rise?
Well, my prediction is VAT.
For the sake of transparency, I should say that I don't know that there will be a VAT rise.
But a deferred increase from 17.5% to 22.5% in the VAT rate would raise around £20bn.
And it's one of the few future tax rises that might actually stimulate a bit of increased economic activity ahead of its implementation, rather than encouraging us to save.
