Research and analysis

It has always been difficult to justify the existence of a separate tax on corporations in a fiscal system based ultimately on individual ability to pay and many, indeed, have argued that the corporation tax should, in principle, be abrogated.

While much recent attention has been paid to the problems involved in estimating the degree of welath inequality in Britain, and policies to reduce it have been the subject of widespread discussion, there is a relative paucity of knowledge about the reasons for its existence and persistence.

The title I have chosen for tonight covers an important group of questions, which have been much in the forefront of discussion in recent years.

The case which Mr Richardson makes for the general adoption of some effective form of inflation accounting for business purposes is unanswerable.

With the passing of the Finance Act of 1979 the new system of Petroleum Revenue Tax (PRT) became law.

The main purpose of CTT is the equitable one of continuing the slow process of reducing the inequality of wealth.

Since coming to office the present government has been involved in implementing its economic philosophy, which sees the future growth and development of the UK economy dependent upon the elimination of inflation, the re-establishment of economic incentives, the return of many activities to the market place and a reduction in the public sector's involvement in economic and social affairs.

Some recent attention has been given to the so called 'Laffer Curve'.

Professor Townsend's monumental study of poverty in the United Kingdom has been long awaited. It is based on a specially commissioned household survey and the results are meticulously documented.

Nearly all food prices in Europe are now determined, not by market forces, but by the operation of the Common Agricultural Policy.

There were two principal elements to the June 1979 budget. One was the very substantial reductions which were made in the higher rates of income tax.

This is that, when inflation reaches anything like 10 percent p.a., it becomes essential to find ways of measuring companies' real profits and that it is these 'real' profits (however defined) which should form the basis of such matters as pricing policy, dividend distributions, and taxation.

One of the original, if unstated, objectives of the Housing Finance Review initiated in 1975 was to provide a systematic comparison of the distribution of housing subsidies across categories of households differentiated by tenure and other characteristics.

A few years ago it looked as if the North Sea tax system, like other aspects of UK oil policy, might succumb to that national weakness of ours known as 'adversary politics'.

There is now a compelling case for reforming British budgetary practice.

In July, the research staff of the Institute for Fiscal Studies produced an index, the Gross Earnings Deflator (GED), which was designed to show how much, on average, the gross earnings of the working population need to increase to compensate them for changes in inflation and the tax system. The government's new Taxes and Prices Index (TPI), first published in August, is similar in intention and construction