Established in 1969, the IFS has come a long way since four financial professionals lamented the poor design of Capital Gains Tax and decided that fiscal policy in Britain needed more effective independent scrutiny.

Our work now covers public finances, tax and welfare policy, tax law, education, inequality and poverty, pensions, productivity and innovation, consumer behaviour and international development. As fate would have it, we celebrate our anniversary at a time when all these topics could not be more relevant to the policy debate.

We are grateful to all those who support our work - and in particular to the Economic and Social Research Council, whose core funding makes it possible to sustain our basic research and to respond flexibly to rapidly changing policy developments.

We begin our anniversary year with our annual Green Budget, which examines some of the many challenges that must be keeping Alistair Darling awake at nights as his Budget draws nearer. In February we will be casting our eye over the Government's progress in reducing child poverty. And later in the year we will be publishing our flagship review of tax reform, chaired for us by the Nobel laureate Sir James Mirrlees.

As I hope you have noticed, to celebrate our anniversary we have also given our website a spring clean. We hope this will make access to our analysis quicker and simpler for visitors, as well as easier on the eye. There is still plenty of work to do, so please let us know if you experience any difficulties. We have also introduced this "Observations" slot, which will provide an opportunity for our researchers to offer brief comments on current developments and debates. If you would like receive email alerts when these are posted, please contact Bonnie Brimstone.