Dr Kate Smith

Small businesses are widely perceived to be the engines of growth and employment. That’s one reason why most self-employment income, dividends and capital gains are taxed at lower rates than wage income.

Our new research shows that company owner-managers respond to changes in income taxes by adjusting how and when they take money out of their company and not by changing the amount of income they create or how much investment they do.

Over 50 countries and localities, including the UK, have recently introduced taxes on soft drinks. In new IFS research funded by the National Institute of Health Research under the Department for Health’s Obesity Policy Research Unit, we survey the evidence on the effects of soft drink taxes on prices and purchases in 27 studies covering 11 jurisdictions (Berkeley, Boulder, Catalonia, Chile, France, Maine, Mexico, Ohio, Philadelphia, Portugal and Washington).

Advertising of high fat, salt or sugar (HFSS) food and drink during children’s television programmes has been banned in the UK since 2007. The Government has recently announced that they will consult on further advertising restrictions for products high in fat, salt and sugar on TV.

The government has launched a consultation on whether to ban the advertising of food and drink high in fat, salt or sugar on television before the 9pm watershed. But the impact of such restrictions would depend on how firms change their advertising strategies following the ban.

40% of the growth in the UK’s workforce since 2008 has come from people working for their own business. IFS researchers are using administrative tax records to learn more about the self-employed and company owner-managers, including their characteristics, how these groups have been changing in recent years and how they respond to the tax system.

An anti-obesity drive is about to see a tax introduced on sugary drinks across the UK, while Scotland is set to impose a minimum price on alcohol to target problem drinking. But does making unhealthy products more expensive persuade people to make "better" choices? And what are the trade-offs associated with doing so?

IFS Senior Research Economist Kate Smith gives evidence at the Health Select Committeeand the Home Affairs Committee a which are holding a one-off oral evidence session to assess the case for introducing a minimum unit price (MUP) on alcohol in England in the light of developments since the Health C...

The impact of variation in diet quality across individuals on obesity and diet-related disease has received much attention, but variation in individuals’ diet quality over time less so. This column combines British data on food purchases with a model in which individual choice is driven by the influence of a healthy self and an unhealthy self to examine self-control problems in food choice.