National Insurance contributions

This presentation was given at the IFS post-Budget presentation on 17 March 2016.

This presentation was given by Barra Roantree at the IFS public economics lectures, held in London on 7 January 2016.

Presented at the IFS Post-Spending Review/Autumn Statement Analysis on 26 November, 2015.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has published a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the government’s current tax and benefit plans and the National Living Wage on household incomes and financial work incentives. This Observation article summarises the main findings of that report ahead of the 2015 Autumn Statement, when the Chancellor is expected to announce amendments to his planned cuts to tax credits. The report finds that both the package of tax and benefit changes, and the new ‘National Living Wage’ will, on average, strengthen incentives to move into paid work and to work more if in work.

Housing benefit costs us more today than it did before the welfare cuts took effect in 2010, writes Paul Johnson in The Times. Failure to build enough houses and tax regimes that discourage owner occupiers from downsizing have together pushed up property values. Increasing numbers of young people in particular now resort to paying spiralling rents – with the housing benefit bill taking the toll.

Paul Johnson, writing for the BBC, outlines the history of housing benefit and the gradual diversion of government funding away from house building and towards subsidising rents.

The 8 July Budget may prove to be George Osborne’s best chance to bring in some much-needed reforms to our creaking and increasingly incoherent tax system. This observation suggests some important directions for reform and calls for an improvement in the way policy is made. If this is to be a Budget for productivity, then both a better, and a more predictable, tax system should be an important part of it.

Paul Johnson, writing for The Conversation, says that the recent general election offered the electorate a big fiscal choice over dealing with the deficit, but we weren’t confronted with the big, longer term choices that we will have to make in response to growing pressures created by an ageing population. By 2020 public spending will be much more focused on health and pensions than it was in the year 2000. That trend will continue in the coming decades and it will mean tough choices on overall spending, tax rises and spending on health and pensions.

The Conservatives’ victory in the general election means that we should shortly find out how they will find the additional benefit cuts to which they have committed. This observation, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, briefly summarises previous IFS analysis of the context for these choices and the kinds of options that are on the table.

This observation summarises the findings of new IFS research on recent trends in those receiving out of work disability benefits published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Over time, an increasing proportion of these recipients is: younger rather than older, female rather than male, and claiming benefits due to a mental or behavioural health problem rather than a physical one. Issues raised by these trends for both disability and employment policy are also discussed.

In an article for the Tax Journal, Paul Johnson offers his advice to the new government on what is needed on tax policy to change it for the better.

IFS Director Paul Johnson highlights crucial gaps in the information underpinning economic and fiscal election pledges from both Labour and the Conservatives in this comment piece published in the Daily Mail newspaper.