Benefits

How does the taxation of housing fit into how we analyse other taxes and the tax system as a whole, and what can we conclude about how it should be reformed? This was a Keynote Presentation given at the Tax Research Network Annual Conference, at Aston University and online, on 9 September 2021.

Presented "The Impact of Payroll Tax Subsidies: Theory and Evidence" at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Official statistics released by DWP today show that by February this year there were 5 million Universal Credit (UC) claimants – double the number seen pre-pandemic.

This report examines how household incomes were changing in the UK up to the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how other measures of household living standards have changed over the course of the pandemic.

The ‘gig economy’ has grown and risen up the policy agenda in recent years. The associated growth in people working through their own businesses and in work happening through platforms highlights difficult questions about when to have boundaries in the tax system and where to put them.

Are there any common themes in how the current Scottish Government has used these powers? Who are the winners and losers from the reforms it has under

It’s easy enough to see the politics behind Rishi Sunak’s tax increase of choice. Opaque, in the future, jam today, well-hidden pain tomorrow. The scale of the increase, though, makes the economics more concerning. Not only is he unlikely to get as much revenue as he’s banking on, he risks reducing investment levels and hence wages and living standards over the long run.

The tax system discourages employment, investment and risk-taking. It needs reform, say Stuart Adam and Helen Miller.

Presentation of "Tax Evasion and the Minimum Wage" at the OECD Economics Department.

Remember, every time someone calls for more money for the NHS, or social care, or universal credit, as it seems just about everyone is nowadays, they are also implicitly calling for higher taxes in the long run. That’s a less exciting thing to call for. And these issues of tax design may be particularly unexciting. But bigger spending without better taxes will cost us much dearer than it should.