In this paper, we show some simple ways in which the government could examine the impact of tax and benefit reforms on men and women using household level data that it already has available.

We estimate that households are about 6% worse off than they might have expected had incomes risen in the normal way.

This Briefing Note analyses Universal Credit as set out in the government's White Paper, Universal Credit: Welfare that Works.

This Briefing Note provides projections of income poverty among children and working-age adults in the UK under current tax and benefit policies.

Immediately following the Spending Review of 20th October, the IFS updated its analysis of the distributional impact of tax and benefit reforms to be introduced between 2010-11 and 2014-15, taking into account the effects of the reforms announced in the Spending Review.2 This did not substantially alter the conclusions from previous analysis by IFS researchers that the impact of the tax and benefit reforms to be introduced over this period was decreasing as a proportion of income within the lowest 90% of households in the income distribution, although it is the very richest households that will lose the most overall. If we were instead to rank households by expenditure, which as we have argued previously might better reflect households' lifetime incomes, losses as a proportion of expenditure again fall as we move up the expenditure distribution

Details of the proposed changes to higher education (HE) have been finalised ahead of tomorrow's vote in the House of Commons on the raising of the cap on tuition fees to £9,000. We offer an analysis in this Briefing Note.

The tax treatment of intellectual property is currently in the spotlight and there is considerable interest in understanding how taxes affect firms' choices over where to hold patents for tax purposes.

In July 2010, the Department for Education launched a consultation on school funding arrangements in 2011-12, and their plans for a pupil premium from September 2011 onwards. This briefing note contains the response of IFS researchers to this consultation.

We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of moving to a more integrated benefit and tax system, and then discuss issues relating to strengthening work incentives.

We calculate the impact of a 45p per unit minimum price and describe how different households and retailers would be affected.