In April 2013, council tax benefit (CTB), which provided help for low-income households with their council tax, was abolished. In its place, local authorities (LAs) in England were charged with designing their own council tax support (CTS) schemes for those of working age - though they were...

Council tax bands in Wales are based on property values in April 2003 - 17 years ago. That is more up to date than in England and Scotland, where they are based on values in April 1991 (almost 30 years ago!). But it is still enough time for the relative values of different properties to change...

Council tax matters. It matters to local government as, at over £31 billion a year, it now makes up over half of its funding for non-education expenditure. It matters for households, for whom the bills take up an average of over 3% of their income. And it matters to central government, which is...

The parts of the UK tax system that dictate how different forms of income are taxed are of central importance and are not fit for purpose. There is a large, unjustified and problematic bias against employment and labour incomes and in favour of business ownership and capital incomes. The tax...

Delaying retirement has significant positive effects on the average cognition and physical mobility of women in England, at least in the short run. Exploiting the increase in employment of 60-63 year old women resulting from the increase in the female State Pension Age, we show that working...

Delaying retirement has significant positive effects on the average cognition and physical mobility of women in England, at least in the short run. Exploiting the increase in employment of 60-63 year old women resulting from the increase in the female State Pension Age, we show that working...

This report discusses how public policy should change to bring about better outcomes in retirement for employees through their accumulation of private pension wealth. In doing so, we draw on new modelling undertaken as part of the Pensions Review (O'Brien, Sturrock and Cribb, 2024) as well as...

There have been widespread concerns about the patterns of retirement saving amongst self-employed workers, who now make up just over one in eight of the whole labour force. Most strikingly, the fraction of self-employed workers earning over £10,000 who are making contributions to a private...

This report discusses how public policy should change to bring about better outcomes in retirement for employees through their accumulation of private pension wealth. In doing so, we draw on new modelling undertaken as part of the Pensions Review (O'Brien, Sturrock and Cribb, 2024) as well as...

There have been widespread concerns about the patterns of retirement saving amongst self-employed workers, who now make up just over one in eight of the whole labour force. Most strikingly, the fraction of self-employed workers earning over £10,000 who are making contributions to a private...