MOST weekday mornings, at 9.30, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) posts a new release on its website. And most of these releases, despite being lovingly crafted by the official statisticians, are forgotten by mid-morning coffee.

Some of them, however, have profound significance, and we had one such last week. The backdrop to it was that our hero, Gordon Brown, who a few days ago donned an RAF helmet in what may have been a subconscious tribute to Margaret Thatcher’s famous tank commander pose, was up against it.

It was only a matter of time, said critics, before the chancellor would have to bow to the inevitable and put up taxes, or at least throw in the towel on his apparently sacrosanct fiscal rules.

Brown, it should be said, has shown an ability to take evasive action on this issue in a way that would have done Biggles proud. Since the last big tax rise in 2002 — the increase in employer and employee National Insurance contributions — he has managed to avoid been picked up on the radar screens of most taxpayers.

Yes, the tax burden has risen, but it has done so by stealth, by the closing of tax loopholes and by some targeted increases, notably the additional tax on North Sea oil companies announced in December’s pre-budget report. Brown also dodged and weaved his way round his own fiscal rules, accepting with open arms revised ONS data that allowed him to extend the economic cycle back to 1997 and make his golden rule easier to achieve.

But there was still a significant doubt. Even two months ago, after the pre-budget report, the consensus was that further tax rises would be needed.

That was the significance of last week’s release. January is a key month for public finances, when the Treasury coffers are boosted by corporation-tax payments. More money flows into the exchequer in January than in any other month of the year. This year it did so in spades.

Inland Revenue receipts were up by 21%, or £6.7 billion, on a year earlier, boosted by a 51% rise in corporation-tax receipts. There’s a health warning attached to the figures — about a third of the corporation-tax boost was due to changes in North Sea tax. But that was always the plan. Vat revenues were less buoyant, up only 3.7%, reflecting the squeeze on high-street spending.

But the significance was that for the first time in years Brown is well-positioned to meet his forecasts for the public finances. The Ernst & Young Item club says this will be the first occasion since the budget of March 2000 that the chancellor has met his forecast, though in the interests of fairness it should be pointed out that he revised it up, by £5 billion, as recently as December.

One swallow does not make a summer, and one month’s figures should not be over-interpreted. But the writing has been on the wall for Brown’s black hole; the idea that there would need to be tax hikes of £10 billion or more to square the circle of fast-growing public spending and apparently binding fiscal rules.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies, in its “green” budget at the end of January, said there was a “reasonable case” for a £2.5 billion increase in tax. That is not so much a black hole as a bit of fraying at the edges. The game was nearly up.

The key to the outlook for the public finances is not just that Brown is benefiting from rising profits, a higher oil price, fiscal drag and his own measures designed to squeeze more out of the North Sea and closing tax loopholes. It was also the signal, in the pre-budget report, that public spending will slow sharply to 1.9%-a-year growth, from 2008 onwards.

Provided Brown sticks to those tough targets, implying spending growth below that of the economy as a whole, John Hawksworth of Price Waterhouse Coopers says he will get away without having to announce any meaningful additional tax rises.

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