Taxes and benefits

The UK raised 35% of national income in tax in 2018–19. Figure 1 shows that tax as a share of national income has fluctuated between around 30% and 35% of national income since the end of the second world war and been rising since the early 1990s. Tax revenues are now, just, higher as a share of national income than at any point since the late 1960s.

This briefing note discusses the consequences of Boris Johnson's tax policies, which age groups gain, and what the impact might be on the number of people that pay higher rate tax or NICs.

The tax and benefit system is a key tool for a government trying to reduce inequality. In this briefing note, we examine the effects that cash benefits and taxes had on UK inequality in 2016–17.

This research explored the prevalence of gifting in the general population and how it varied between different groups, based on a new quantitative survey was conducted with a representative sample of adults in Great Britain. The survey also explored the nature of gifting – including the number and value of gifts given, who they were given to, and the motivations for doing so – as well as awareness of inheritance tax rules and exemptions.

This is a response to the House of Commons Treasury Committee's call for evidence for their inquiry into the impact of business rates on business.

In this research we investigate who wins and loses from universal credit, and by how much. For the first time, we also look at the effects of universal credit on people’s incomes over eight years of their lives, rather than just at a point in time. This lets us look at the impact on those that are persistently, rather than temporarily, low income.

This Saturday (6 April 2019) marks the start of a new tax year. Unlike many other countries, the UK routinely – and sensibly – uprates the cash values of most tax thresholds and benefit rates each year in line with inflation, in order to maintain their real value.

Alcohol consumption is associated with costs to society from anti-social behaviour, crime and public costs of policing and health care. These externalities are non-linear in alcohol consumption, with a small number of heavy drinkers creating the majority of the costs. Governments attempt to reduce problematic alcohol consumption through restricting availability and with policies that aim to increase prices. In this paper we study the design of alcohol taxes.

In recent years there has been renewed interest in the question of whether additional taxes should be devolved to English local government. This report considers the options and issues.

This paper develops a model of a growing open economy rich in non‐renewable resources, the extraction of which negatively impacts domestic productivity and whose sector competes with final production for capital.

This paper examines the behavioural response of households to wealth transfer taxation using household survey data from Japan, with particular attention being paid to the implications of different bequest motives that households may have.