Behavioural responses to the tax and benefit system -

The design of the tax and benefit system has important impacts on the decisions made by individuals, households, and companies. Over the past 40 years, IFS researchers have been at the forefront of efforts to understand these effects, making seminal contributions to our knowledge of how the tax and benefit system affects how much women choose to work, save, study, and invest in skills. Recent work examines subjects as diverse as how fat taxes affect household consumption, what effect corporation tax has on the location decisions of firms, and how top incomes respond to higher taxes.

Selected highlights

Journal article | Econometrica

Female labor supply, human capital, and welfare reform

We estimate a dynamic model of employment, human capital accumulation—including education, and savings for women in the United Kingdom, exploiting tax and benefit reforms, and use it to analyze the effects of welfare policy.

Observation

How do the rich respond to higher income tax rates?

This Briefing Note presents new analysis of how high income taxpayers respond to changes in income tax rates. The Note is based on three new Working Papers, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the Economic and Social Research Council and the European Research Council.

Journal article | Econometrica

Estimating labour supply responses using tax reforms