Tax options for a tight Budget

Описание: November's Budget looks likely to contain tax increases - perhaps substantial ones. In the spring, the Chancellor chose to meet her borrowing rule by just £10 billion. The dilution of planned reductions to the generosity of disability benefits, and the partial reversal of recent cuts to pensioners’ winter fuel payments, have already reduced that slender margin. A downgrade to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s economic forecasts could easily eliminate it.

Should the Chancellor choose to respond with tax increases she will not be short of options. But she has not made life easy for herself. Political commitments (made in the Labour manifesto and elsewhere) appear to rule out many of the most obvious sources of revenue.

At this online event, part of this year's IFS Green Budget in association with Barclays and with funding from the Nuffield Foundation, IFS researchers explored some of the options that remain open to the Chancellor; outlining both how much different measures would be expected to raise and evaluating their economic merits.

We also discussed some of the (many) shortcomings of the British tax system - shortcomings that both hamper growth and make taxation less fair - and some of the ways in which genuine reform could allow the UK to raise tax revenue in less damaging ways.