Research and analysis

Much was promised: little has been produced. In his 1979 budget speech the Chancellor of Exchequer, Sir Geoffrey Howe said that he had asked the Inland Revenue to prepare a green paper on the future of corporation tax.

Few, if any, of the component parts of the British tax system could be regarded as being free of serious problems, but the UK corporation tax must be the tax which is most urgently in need of reform.

The attraction of these other methods is that they require no administrative intervention. They only have to shape a market environment in which the freely taken decisions will be non-inflationary.

Recent UK economic history has been characterised by high levels of unemployment, coupled with a high nominal Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PSBR).

The first review of the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme is currently in progress.

The UK tax and Benefit system has developed over the last century in a fairly haphazard manner.

In the Budget of March 1981 the Chancellor made changes which will produce a dramatic reduction in the real burdens of most potential payers of Capital Transfer Tax (CTT).

It is almost exactly ten years since the publication of the VAT Green Paper, and eight years since the introduction of VAT.

At the end of the 1970s there appeared to be wide agreement as to the desirability of switching the burden of taxation away from direct taxes towards indirect taxes.

In our article in the July 1980 issue of Fiscal Studies, we examined the impact of the growth of North Sea oil production on the domestic economy.

The economist's approach to this question must rest on the basic concept of the opportunity cost arising when individuals engage in market work rather than producing goods and services at home.

Recent British Governments of both Left and Right have been agreed that merger policy is in need of review.

After the 1979 budget, in which the Chancellor reduced income tax but increased VAT to 15 per cent, we presented (Kay and Morris (1979)) a simple framework to describe the UK tax system.

In the budget of 1980 the current administration launched the Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS), a four year plan designed primarily to reduce inflation but also to generate economic growth, see FSBR (1980).

The discussion of British industry tends (understandably) to be dominated by the disappointing record of the past twenty years.

This paper examines in some detail the question of whether married couples should be taxed individually or jointly.

Much interest has recently been expressed in the scope and growth of the black economy, and several estimates of its size have been presented, which invariably receive wide coverage in the press and elsewhere

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has earned for itself a high reputation for intellectual excellence, a quality which I am sure will be much in evidence during this symposium.

There are two reasons for concern about the effect fo the tax and benefit system on incentives for low paid workers.

Cash Limits were introduced for the financial year 1976-77 by the Treasury as the dominant basis of control over a wide range of expenditures by central departments; health, local and water authorities; and public corporations.