Taxes and benefits

Few subjects can have received so much serious study recently as the reform of corporate taxation.

This commentary provides assessment and analysis of the three main parties' tax and social security proposals.

Social security payments are typically thought of as being aimed at those who are not in paid work, whether because of age, ill health, caring responsibilities or involuntary unemployment

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.

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.