Taxes and benefits

This presentation was given to a 'Citizens' Jury' run by BritainThinks and PriceWaterhouseCoopers on 16 July 2010 at the University of Warwick.

This presentation was given at the University of Oxford's CBT summer conference, July 2010.

This talk was given at a DWP seminar, 'Wage supplementation: what do we know?'

We draw upon the Mirrlees Review of the tax system to examine how the Government might want to think about raising extra revenue.

Now that the Office for Budget Responsibility has delivered its judgement that the structural hole in the public finances is slightly larger than Alistair Darling claimed in his final Budget in March, attention turns to how George Osborne might go about filling it in his first Budget next week.

This I was given to the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group.

This presentation was the Presidential address at the Society for Labor Economics, World Meeting in London, June 2010.

This presentation was an invited Address at the Canadian Economics Association Meetings, Quebec, June 2010.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, today gave a little more detail on the Government's plans for welfare reform, suggesting that the benefit system needed simplifying, incentives to work strengthening, and welfare-to-work programmes reforming . But what can actually be done?

The Labour party is pointing to the fact that the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats are proposing cuts to child tax credit for middle- to high-income families with children. But just what cuts are being proposed and which families would be affected? And how different is this from current policy?

All the main UK political parties claim to have put the needs of families at the heart of their campaigns. The Conservative Party has also pledged to end the couple penalty for all couples in the tax credit system. How does the reality - as measured by specific pledges in their manifestos - match up to the rhetoric?

Robert Chote, Director of IFS, delivered these opening remarks at the IFS 2010 Election Briefing on 27 April 2010.