Debt in early game in Victoria

[Caledonian Rhyfelwyr]

Victoria 1, not 2, btw

Half the nations I try to play I have to quite because I go spiralling into debt before I can do anything else. With the UK, with max tarriffs, 50% taxes, I go straight into debt. China was even more horrendoues.

What on earth am I supposed to do to avoid this?

[Hilarion]

Victoria 1, not 2, btw

Half the nations I try to play I have to quite because I go spiralling into debt before I can do anything else. With the UK, with max tarriffs, 50% taxes, I go straight into debt. China was even more horrendoues.

What on earth am I supposed to do to avoid this?

Try decreasing military spending, or manually managing trade. You can sell most of the starting goods in your stockpile. Also I would suggest playing as a smaller nation when you're first getting the hang of the game (Sweden is a good choice, for example).

[Dr. Croccer]

-Set tariffs to highest
-Sell any products you produce at about 10 (keep a stockpile of 50 for important things like steel and canned food)
-Set taxes for all classes to 49% (don't do this with the upper class if you want a free market to function)

If those don't do the trick

-Decrease military spending
-Buy products that your factories might be missing
-Cut on education, crime fighting, military and social benefits

[Tankfriend]

-Cut on education, crime fighting

Only cut these two if absolutely necessary, though, because these cuts come with their own share of problems. Educational investments are vital if you want to keep up with the research, because it determines your literacy rate, which in turn has a profound impact on the number of research points you can get. And cutting crime fighting can cause lots of corruption, criminal syndicates etc. in your provinces, which can drag down your efficiency quite noticeably.
Provided that you have enough income/expense reductions from the other measures, don't bother lowering these just for the sake of making more money.