This chapter of our second annual Budget Report looks beyond 2024-25 to the medium-term outlook for the Scottish Government's funding, and the implications of the funding picture for the choices and trade-offs faced when allocating funding between areas of the budget. The Scottish Government had...

The Scottish Government's Budget for 2024-25 takes place at a time of particular uncertainty about the future funding environment. UK government spending plans both for the coming year and for later years seem likely to be topped up, but when and by how much is unclear. The current UK government...

The introduction of universal credit (UC) has been the most significant reform to the workingage benefits system since the reforms following the post-war Beveridge Report. When fully rolled out, around 8 million families - 29% of all working-age families - will be entitled to the benefit. UC is...

This chapter of our second annual Budget Report looks at Scottish tax policy and revenue, the overall amount of funding available for Scottish public services, and planned spending on different individual services in the coming financial year, 2024-25. In several important respects, the Scottish...

In 2019, the employment rate among 25- to 64-year-olds in the UK reached 80% - the highest on record, and considerably higher than the 76% rate recorded shortly before the Great Recession. In this paper, we investigate this growth across several dimensions. We analyse which sectors, demographic...

We analyse the impact of changes to devolved income tax rates and bands and benefits, and show the total impact of the changes.

The aim of this report, the IFS's first in-depth analysis of the Scottish Government Budget, is to look at some of the key implications for the coming year, and for the longer term. We do not attempt to cover all of the different services that the Scottish Government is responsible for, or all...

We investigate the potential impacts of the government's proposed reforms to the Work Capability Assessment.

In April, the UK entered the second year of a six-year freeze in the cash value of income tax thresholds - a policy set to become the single biggest tax-raising measure since the 1970s. This is the latest in a long line of measures (by successive governments) that have hugely increased the scope...