Government finances and spending

Poor tax design creates inefficiency and unfairness but it is possible to correct the flaws

Tax is just one policy lever among many others, yet our tax system affects the UK’s industrial structure in many ways. We should give consideration to these effects when designing tax policy. When we deviate from tax neutrality to steer the industrial structure, three questions need to be addressed. Is there a good reason to change a market outcome? Is tax the right tool? And can we design tax solutions where benefits outweigh costs? Removing current distortions from our tax policy is often much more sensible than layering another distortion on top.

A presentation on recent trends and the outlook for local government spending. It includes a discussion of local tax devolution options, and the potential impacts of the ongoing Fair Funding Review.

In this article, David Phillips argues that pivotal choices loom on local government funding, but if we don’t address what we expect from our councils we risk a system that fails to meet our objectives.

This weekend the state pension age, for both men and women, rose to 65 years and five months. It will continue to rise every couple of months until it reaches 66 in October next year. Further increases to 67 in 2028 and to 68 a decade or so after that are planned. These increases are the obvious, if belated, response to a sharp growth in life span.

This presentation was given at a CIOT/IFS debate on 'Taxing commercial property – time to tweak business rates or replace with a land value tax?', held in London on 18 June 2019.

A presentation given by Carl Emmerson at the ESRI event Budget perspectives 2020 on 13th June, 2019.

Videos and slides from the launch of the new IFS report, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, into the overall impacts on health of the Sure Start programme.

We are in the midst of major changes to local government funding – both its level and the system for raising and distributing it. This note brings together some of the key findings of our research on this topic and highlights where to find further information.

This month marks six years since councils were given responsibility for designing schemes that help low-income working-age households to pay their council tax, at the same time as central government funding for it was cut. In recently published research, we look at how schemes have changed, and with what effects.

Almost six years since council tax support was localised, research into the design and effects of local schemes reveals three key insights. This article first appeared in Benefit magazine and is reproduced here with full permission.

While the UK’s exit from the European Union continues to dominate the political and economic landscape, another important process looms: the 2019 Spending Review. This will determine how government spending is to be distributed across departments beyond 2019–20, including spending on overseas aid.