Could Jeremy Hunt actually abolish National Insurance?

Could Jeremy Hunt really abolish employee National Insurance (NI)? His additional 2p cut announced in yesterday’s Budget seems to be the start of what the Tories might offer up in their election manifesto. Hunt has now suggested the end goal would be to merge income tax with employee NI, helping to simplify the tax code. The point was further made by Rishi Sunak at the Centre for Policy Studies’ 50th anniversary dinner last night: that it should be the Conservative party’s ‘plan, long term, to end that unfairness’ of taxing income twice.

But is this in any way possible? To abolish employee NI comes with a price tag of roughly £50 billion – even more than the £40 billion which will be raised by freezing tax thresholds, which the Tories haven’t ditched despite pulling millions of workers into paying more tax. Already there is speculation about how this might be affordable: would income tax rise? Would employer NI payments (which are bigger, and bring in more revenue than employee NI) be pushed up?