Government finances and spending

It is widely agreed that, in the absence of specific corrective aims, the corporate tax system should aim for neutrality.

This report by the Capital Taxes Group examines what impact distortions have on the taxation of capital and whether or not these are an unavoidable consequence of governments' desire to tax companies.

Corporation tax in the UK is based on an estimate of historic cost company profits.

In this commentary we describe in detail reforms taking place to local authority finances and analyse their effects on local authorities and local tax payers.

Although it is now over twenty years since the European Commission first published proposals concerning the harmonisation of corporate taxes, the debate on the desirablility of any such reform has not yet achieved a high political profile.

The difficulties encountered in forecasting social security expenditure (significantly underpredicted for much of the 1980s) have long been a source of concern-not least to officials in the DSS.

The most dramatic change in the 1989 Budget was a major reform of the structure of employee's National Insurance contributions (NICs).