AN INDEPENDENT RECORD OF EVERY PROMISE MADE IN THE STATES OF JERSEY
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The Budget 2026-2029 leaves an operating deficit of £12.3m after depreciation. Close it. Every figure you start from is a real line in that Budget, from Health and Care Jersey to the smallest non-ministerial office. But the island answers back: raise a duty too far and activity moves off the books, across the Channel or into a slower property market.
Then the harder half. Every line you cut is somebody’s service, and a Senator is elected island-wide — in 2026 the ninth and final seat went by 2,197 votes, and Reform Jersey’s own leader missed it. Leaving the deficit alone is not free either: on the Government’s own multi-year forecast it widens every year, and it is the fiscal hawks, not the tax rise, that starts collecting the four signatures a motion of no confidence needs.
Every tax head from the Budget’s 2026 forecast. Moving a lever past its published rate assumes a two-stage behavioural response, mirroring Guernsey’s equivalent tool - see “What is published, and what this tool assumes” below for each lever’s elasticity and its evidence. Source: Budget 2026-2029 (P.70/2025, as amended).
standard rate 20%
Source: Budget 2026-2029 Table 2; standard rate per Income Tax (Jersey) Law 1961
standard rate 5%
Source: Budget 2026-2029 Table 2; standard rate per Goods and Services Tax (Jersey) Law 2007
mixed 0%/10%/20% regime plus Pillar Two top-up
Source: Budget 2026-2029 Table 2 (derived, no single published rate to move)
alcohol, tobacco, fuel duty
Source: Budget 2026-2029 Table 2 (derived, duty covers several separate schedules)
banded property/share-transfer duty
Source: Budget 2026-2029 Table 2 (derived, duty is banded not a flat rate)
What your Budget sets in motion. Where a duty rise drives activity off the books, the lost revenue is already netted off the figures above, so the gauge shows what Jersey would actually collect rather than what the rate card implies.
Nothing triggered yet. The Budget as adopted sets nothing new in motion.
In 2026 that seat went at 11,571votes, and Reform Jersey’s own leader missed it by 2,197.
The books may be in order, but a Senator's seat is won or lost island-wide: in 2026 the ninth seat went at 11,571 votes, and Reform Jersey's own leader missed it by 2,197.
The same measures, sequenced differently, are a different political event. Act in your first year and the anger has four years to fade before the 2030 ballot box, and the books have four years to heal. Defer it and you meet the anger at full strength, against a deficit that four years of growth has made worse. Nothing below changes what you have chosen — only when it bites.
The dashed line is what happens if nobody does anything, on Jersey’s own multi-year Budget forecast: general tax revenue growing about 4.3% a year against spending informed by a broader published trend of around 4.5%. The gap is smaller than Guernsey’s, and that is an honest finding about Jersey’s own figures, not a modelling choice — but the position after depreciation still opens at −£12.3mand is not closing itself.
Every bloc feels two things at once: what you did to them, which fades, and where the island ends up, which does not. A bloc can be furious about a measure and still better off for it — and a bloc you never touched will still turn on you if the position is left unbalanced, because they are the ones who depend on what it eventually closes.
Aged 65 and over, using health services most heavily, and - on the published figures - the age group most exposed to relative low income of any in Jersey.
Schools, childcare and the cost of everything else. The under-16 population fell 7% since 2019 even as the island grew, which is its own story.
Outside finance and outside government: retail, construction, hospitality, trades. One in ten private-sector jobs is zero-hours.
The public sector grew 22% since 2019 while private-sector jobs grew 3% - an asymmetry that is itself part of the politics of any pay-bill line.
Jersey's largest single sector by some distance, and the one the zero-ten corporate regime exists to keep. Mobile, and the first to notice a change of regime.
Absorb GST compliance and duty costs personally. 90% of Jersey undertakings employ fewer than 10 staff.
Most exposed to a flat tax on spending and to any cut to Income Support. 21% of Jersey individuals are in relative low income overall - this bloc is the working-age share of that, since retired low-income households are counted separately above.
The Assembly is not the electorate, and it does not have to wait for an election. Your own 13-member government stays with you by convention of collective responsibility — everyone else’s support depends on what you have done to them. Note the fiscal hawks: they are provoked by an unbalanced position, not by the medicine, which is why there is no version of this page where doing nothing keeps the room quiet.
Jersey's only organised opposition party, and the readiest to formally challenge a Budget - though six of its seven seats are held on majorities of 85 votes or fewer.
Watching whether Jersey's zero-ten regime and its 20% flat rate still look competitive, and whether GST or Impôts are creeping upward.
Will trade almost any tax rise for Health and Care Jersey, schools and Social Security. A cut to a service line is what moves them.
Angered by an unclosed deficit, not by the medicine. Leaving it open is what starts this bench collecting signatures.
Twelve parish heads, sitting ex officio rather than on an island-wide or constituency ballot. Each also heads their parish's own Honorary Police, so cuts to roads or policing reach them first.
Jersey’s Standing Orders set the threshold for censure and no confidence as a floor — “at least 3 members... in addition to the proposer” — not Guernsey’s exact ceiling of seven. And an ordinary proposition needs no signatures at all: any single member can lodge one against a measure in this Budget. The real barrier in Jersey is winning the floor vote, not gathering names to be heard.
Any single member can lodge a proposition against a measure in this Budget - Jersey sets no signature threshold at all for an ordinary proposition, unlike a motion of no confidence or censure.
At least three members, in addition to the proposer, put their names to a formal statement that you have handled this badly, with a report explaining why. It does not remove you, and Jersey sets that threshold as a floor, not Guernsey's exact ceiling of seven - so more than four willing members still lodges it just as easily.
At least three members, beyond the proposer, can lodge a motion that the Assembly has no confidence in you. If it carries on a majority of those present and voting, the Chief Minister selection process restarts under a compressed three-working-day timetable (States of Jersey Law 2005, Article 19(2); Standing Order 115(1)(d)(i)) - far faster than the usual five days.
The Standing Orders are real and quoted — including their complications. The four-signature floor for censure and no confidence, the compressed three-working-day timetable for choosing a new Chief Minister if no confidence carries, and the fact that an ordinary proposition needs no signatures at all: that is Standing Orders 19, 21B and 22, and States of Jersey Law 2005, Article 19(2). So is the 2026 Senatorial result the seat calculation is anchored on. What is NOT a fixed number, despite this tool needing one for the chamber gauge above, is the majority to carry a proposition — Article 16 sets that as a majority of members present and voting, with ties failing, and the real number therefore depends on who turns up.
The behavioural model is entirely this tool’s. Nobody has measured how a Jersey bloc responds to a duty rise, how long the island remembers a cut, or how readily a given bench reaches for a signature. The revenue growth rate in the projection above is the Government of Jersey’s own published forecast; almost everything else below it is an assumption chosen to be plausible and internally consistent, and it is the part to argue with.
Only the independent backbench is an invented reading. The Council of Ministers (13 seats) and Reform Jersey (7 seats, 6 on the backbench) are real, named, registered groupings — not modelled. The orientation split applies only to the 18 independent Senators and Deputies who sit in neither, exactly Guernsey’s approach but to a much smaller slice of the chamber, since Jersey’s Connétables and Reform Jersey are also real and named rather than invented.
No individual member is named or given a position on a hypothetical Budget. A party’s declared platform is public; a named backbencher’s vote on a Budget that does not exist is not, and this page does not invent one for anybody. For how members have actually voted, the scorecard is the place to look.
| Assumption | Value | Status | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Margin at the ninth Senatorial seat | 2,197 votes | Published | 11,571 votes took the ninth and final Senatorial seat; Reform Jersey's leader, Sam Mézec, polled 9,374 and finished tenth. |
| Signatures to lodge a censure or no-confidence motion | At least 4 (proposer plus 3) | Published | Standing Orders of the States of Jersey, 11 December 2024 (as amended by P.12/2026), Standing Orders 21B and 22: "signed by at least 3 members of the States, in addition to the proposer". A floor, not Guernsey's exact ceiling of seven. |
| Votes to carry an ordinary proposition | A majority of members present and voting; ties fail | Published | States of Jersey Law 2005, Article 16. There is no fixed number: it depends on attendance that day. This tool's "25 of 49" figure below is a simplification for a fully-attended chamber, not the rule itself. |
| Modelled majority threshold, assuming full attendance | 25 of 49 | Modelled | Half of the Assembly's 49 elected members, rounded up. The real rule (Article 16) can turn on fewer votes in a thinly-attended sitting, or on none at all if a proposition is never put. |
| Quorum | 25 of 49 | Published | States of Jersey Law 2005, Article 15: "no less than one half of the elected members" must be present for business to be conducted. |
| Retired share of the electorate | 20% | Anchored | Residents aged 65 and over are 19.7% of Jersey's population (Statistics Jersey, Total population: December 2024). Used directly as the bloc's share of the roll. |
| Public-sector share of the electorate | 15% | Anchored | 9,950 of Jersey's 64,680 workforce jobs are public sector, 15% (Statistics Jersey, Labour Market December 2025). Scaling jobs to voting households is modelled. |
| Revenue growth in the projection | 4.27% a year | Published | The Government of Jersey's own Income Forecasting Group forecast, Budget 2026-2029: General Tax Revenue is forecast to grow from £1,229.6m (2026) to £1,394.1m (2029). |
| Spending growth in the projection | 4.5% a year | Modelled | Informed by Statistics Jersey's COFOG general government expenditure series (nominal CAGR of about 5.7% a year, 2022-2024) - a broader measure than this Budget's own Net Revenue Expenditure, and a shorter run of data than Guernsey's ten-year pay-bill series, so used as an informed assumption rather than a published forecast. |
| The other five bloc shares, and every turnout weight | See the blocs | Modelled | A plausible split of the roll, summing to 100%. The ordering of turnout by age is the ordinary finding elsewhere, not a Jersey measurement. |
| Independent backbench orientation and faction sizes | See the grid | Modelled | Applied only to the 18 independent Senators and Deputies who sit outside both the Council of Ministers and Reform Jersey - both of which are real, named groupings, not modelled. Never a claim about how a named independent would vote. |
| Anger decay by pace | 40% / 70% / 100% still live at the poll | Modelled | No measurement of Jersey political memory exists. The direction is the well-established one: costs imposed early are discounted by polling day, and this tool assumes four years roughly halves them. |
Every baseline figure above is exact, from the Budget’s own tables. Raising a duty does not raise proportionate revenue, so each lever with a behavioural response carries a price elasticity: quantity falls as the price rises, and past a threshold the response steepens as activity moves off the books - across the Channel, into a slower property market, or offshore. The elasticities below are this tool’s assumptions, not a Fiscal Policy Panel or Treasury forecast.
| Lever | Base | Steepens to | Evidence it is real |
|---|---|---|---|
| Impôts duties | -0.55 | -1.2 | Real anchor: the ferry to Saint-Malo/Cherbourg/Granville and personal import allowances. Elasticity value modelled. |
| Stamp duty | -0.6 | -1.1 | Real anchor: Jersey's own first-time-buyer relief on this duty exists because entry-level transactions are the most price-sensitive. Elasticity value modelled. |
| Corporate Income Tax | -0.2 | -0.6 | Real anchor: Jersey's zero-ten regime and Pillar Two implementation both exist because corporate location is mobile. Elasticity value modelled. |
| Personal Income Tax | -0.15 | -0.5 | Real anchor: Jersey's High Value Residency ("2(1)(e)") programme exists because a slice of the tax base chooses its island of residence. Elasticity value modelled. |
| GST | -0.1 | -0.35 | No Jersey-specific anchor beyond ordinary consumption-tax behaviour; deliberately the mildest and slowest-to-steepen elasticity on the page, since GST is an established tax here, not a new one. |
Total Net Revenue Expenditure published for 2026: £1277.8m. Operating Surplus/(Deficit) after Depreciation published for 2026: −£12.3m. Not included above: the £308.3m 2026 capital and other projects programme (of which £174.7m is the New Healthcare Facilities), which the Budget funds separately from the revenue account this tool balances. Source: Budget 2026-2029 (P.70/2025, as amended).