Work incentive effects -

The tax and benefit system can have dramatic effects on financial incentives to work at all and, if so, how much. IFS researchers do a great deal of work quantifying those incentives and the effects that actual and potential reforms have on them. We also examine how people respond to those incentives in practice.

Selected highlights

Book chapter

The (changing) effects of universal credit

The main purpose of this chapter is to set out the impacts on incomes and incentives of introducing UC, given the current (substantially revised) plans for how UC will look. We also review some of the other very important changes that will be associated with the introduction of UC, such as the ...

Observation

Withdrawal symptoms: the new 'High Income Child Benefit charge'

On Monday, Child Benefit will effectively become an income-related benefit for the first time. This observation reviews the key features of this new policy, highlights unaddressed issues regarding its operation in the long run, and considers how it will fit into the wider welfare system.

IFS Working Paper W10/24

Redistribution, work incentives and thirty years of UK tax and benefit reform

In this paper we look at how the tax and benefit system redistributed income and affected incentives to work in 2009-10, and at the effect of tax and benefit reforms between 1978-79 and 2009-10 on the level of inequality and work incentives.