Budget 2003

Briefing and analysis

The Chancellor made his Budget statement on Wednesday 9th April 2003. There was a press briefing at IFS on Thursday 10th April, at which IFS staff covered the public finances and the distributional impact of the Budget on households, as well as discussing the Child Trust Fund.

The presentations from the briefing can be downloaded in PowerPoint.

Green Budget 2003

The IFS Green Budget 2003 examines the Chancellor's options for the Budget. Areas covered include the public finances and spending plans, the case for converging income tax with National Insurance, a discussion of distributional analysis, child poverty, company taxation and how to measure public sector performance. A short piece by Robert Chote about the Green Budget appeared in Public Finance Magazine, and a piece by Carl Emmerson and Chris Frayne was published after the Budget in the same organ.

Public Finances

Robert Chote considers the current fiscal situation in the Financial Times on 5th March. In a recent piece in Public Finance Magazine, Carl Emmerson looks at the problems that the government still faces to deliver on investment spending.

Inequality and poverty

IFS research, uing the 2003 HBAI figures, examines the recent trends in pensioner poverty and pensioner living standards, analysing how large increases in the minimum income guarantee have affected pensioner poverty, and sets the changes in their historical context. Download the report Sharing in the Nation's Prosperity? Pensioner poverty in Britain, (Commentary No. 93, March 2003). Analysis of the HBAI figures also looks at the government's child poverty targets in How has child poverty changed since 1998-99? An update (Briefing Note 32, March 2003). Our most recent look at trends in income inequality can be seen in Inequality Under New Labour (Briefing Note No. 33, March 2003).

Tax Credits

A new briefing note, The new tax credits (Briefing Note No. 35, April 2003) explains what changes have been made to the system of tax credits and asks why the new tax credits have been introduced, how they work, the cost and distributional impact, the impact on work incentives and what levels of take-up we might expect.