Is promising tax cuts tantamount to bribery?

. . . and so we learn that the Tories are not promising tax cuts before the next election. (Details here.) This tendency of politicians to even discuss tax cuts as a major election issue has always troubled me. Now I think I know a bit more why.

It is wrong for politicians to bribe the electorate. They cannot pay for our votes. Of course, the expenditure of large sums of cash on advertisement, etc. can have positive effects in general (although not always). But spending money on tv ads in no way is like bribery.

When politicians promise tax cuts, they are promising the electorate that if they vote for the politician, then they can expect extra money in their pocket. We might call this indirect bribery. Direct bribery is when politicians pay you directly from their coffers for your vote. This is illegal in an obvious sense. Indirect bribery is different. Rather than pay voters from the party's accounts, the party pays back voters from the treasury. Moreover, all benefit from the bribery: indirect bribery entails that all voters might benefit with cash rewards, even if they did not vote for the victor. (Again, in this way indirect bribery is "indirect" in a genuine sense.)

Indirect and direct bribery are different, but neither can be acceptable. In both cases, politicians offer cash rewards to voters as an incentive for voters to vote for them. If it is wrong that I pay voters directly on election day from my wallet, then I can hardly see how it is less wrong if I pay voters the day after I am elected from the public purse.

There is at least one major qualification in all of this. Of course, the public has a right to know how politicians and parties might spend public money if elected. Talk of budgets is talk of possible tax cuts.

Perhaps then there is no getting out of it: we cannot ban politicians from claiming the public will receive tax cuts if they are elected. However, we should at least recognize this move for what it is: indirect bribery of us all.