Proposed tax and benefit changes: winners and losers in the next term

This Election Briefing Note shows how the tax and benefit reforms proposed by the three main UK parties would affect government revenues and the incomes of different groups in the population. It also shows how the changes to taxes and benefits already announced by the government and due to come into effect between May 2005 and April 2009 will affect household incomes

Take-up of family credit and working families' tax credit: final report

The current government has substantially increased the use of means-tested tax and benefit programmes to try to help people on low incomes. An important early example of this was the replacement in October 1999 of Family Credit (FC), a benefit providing support for low-income working parents, by Working Families' Tax Credit (WFTC). WFTC was delivered differently from FC, it was described as a tax credit rather than a benefit, and it was also much more generous than its predecessor. However, the efficacy of using means-testing to help people on low incomes is limited by the fact that many of the people eligible for means-tested programmes do not take them up. Because of this, one of the government's stated aims when introducing WFTC was to encourage take-up, arguing that as a tax credit rather than a welfare benefit, it will reduce the stigma associated with claiming in-work support, and encourage higher take-up. In this paper we try to answer the question of whether the replacement of FC by WFTC did indeed encourage take-up. We also try and identify more generally what factors are important in explaining non-take-up of FC and WFTC, in particular quantifying the effect of entitlement level and examining the effects of people's knowledge of, and attitudes towards, in-work support. Our approach is an econometric one, investigating the relationship between take-up of FC/WFTC and a variety of explanatory variables in two micro-data-sets, the Family Resources Survey (FRS) and the Families and Children Survey (FACS)

The 10% tax rate: where next?

In Budget 2007, the Government announced the abolition of the 10% starting rate of income tax alongside a wider set of reforms to personal taxes and tax credits to take effect during the period April 2008 to April 2010. Further changes to tax credits and state benefits were announced in PBR 2007 and Budget 2008, some to take effect in 2008-09, some in 2009-10 and others in 2010-11. During April 2008, the Government said that it was looking at ways of compensating the net losers from these changes (in practice, those for whom the losses from the abolition of the 10% band exceeded the gains from the other measures). On 13 May it announced a £600 rise in the income tax personal allowance for 2008-09, with a corresponding cut in the higher-rate threshold. In the light of these changes, this note looks at: * To what extent the rise in the personal allowance, and other measures in Budget 2007, PBR 2007 and Budget 2008, compensate those who lost out from the abolition of the 10% rate of income tax; * To what extent the Government's pre-announced changes to personal taxes, tax credits and benefits for 2010-11 provide compensation for these losers over the medium term; * What options the Government has for 2009-10 and beyond

The benefits of parenting: Government financial support for families with children since 1975

This commentary describes the changes to the structure of child-contingent support through the tax and benefit system since 1975. It also presents new results, which were produced to quantify explicitly the amount of government support for families with children, using representative samples of families from over the past three decades. With these data, it is possible to examine whether child-contingent support has become more or less progressive, or more or less slanted towards large families, lone-parents families or families with young children

Tax and benefit changes: who wins and who loses?

* Tax and benefit changes implemented by Labour since 1997 will have a net cost to the exchequer of around £2.2 billion in 2005-06. The average (mean) impact of this small net giveaway is to raise household disposable incomes by £1.69 a week or 0.4%. The biggest proportionate gains are in the 2nd poorest tenth of the population, whose disposable incomes are increased by 11.4%, while the richest tenth fare worst, with a cut in income of 3.7%. * Tax and benefit reforms since 1997 have clearly been progressive, benefiting the less well-off relative to the better-off. Reforms in the second term - while less generous on average - were more progressive than those in the first, with the poorest faring better. * Increases in council tax above inflation since 1997 will raise £5.8 billion in 2005-06, net of council tax benefit. This outweighs the giveaway by central government, and leaves households overall £2.85 a week worse off on average, equivalent to 0.6% of their disposable incomes. The increase in council tax is regressive, except for the poorest fifth of the population, who are partially protected from the rises by council tax benefit

Does welfare reform affect fertility? Evidence from the UK

In 1999 the UK government made major reforms to the system of child-contingent benefits, including the introduction of Working Families’ Tax Credit and an increase in means-tested Income Support for families with children. Between 1999-2003 government spending per-child on these benefits rose by 50 per cent in real terms, a change that was unprecedented over a thirty year period. This paper examines whether there was a response in childbearing. To identify the effect of the reforms, we exploit the fact that the spending increases were targeted at low-income households and we use the (exogenously determined) education of the woman and her partner to define treatment and control groups. We argue that the reforms are most likely to have a positive fertility effect for women in couples and show that this is the case. We find that there was an increase in births (by around 15 per cent) among the group affected by the reforms

Preliminary burn and impact tests of hybrid polymeric composites

Free graphite fibers released into the environment from resin matrix composite components, as a result of fire and/or explosion, pose a potential hazard to electrical equipment. An approach to prevent the fibers from becoming airborne is to use hybrid composite materials which retain the fibers at the burn site. Test results are presented for three hybrid composites that were exposed to a simulation of an aircraft fire and explosion. The hybrid systems consisted of 16 plies of graphite-epoxy with two plies of Kevlar-, S-glass-, or boron-epoxy on each face. Two different test environments were used. In one environment, specimens were heated by convection only, and then impacted by a falling mass. In the other environment, specimens were heated by convection and by radiation, but were not impacted. The convective heat flux was about 100-120 kW/m in both environments and the radiative flux was about 110 kW/sq m

Financial work incentives in Britain: comparisons over time and between family types

This paper reviews various techniques for quantifying financial incentives to work, shows how financial work incentives have changed across the population since 1979, and estimates how much of these changes are due to changes in the tax and benefit system

Parameter identification for a robotic manipulator arm

The development is described of a nonlinear dynamic model for large oscillations of a robotic manipulator arm about a single joint. Optimization routines are formulated and implemented for the identification of electrical and physical parameters from dynamic data taken from an industrial robot arm. Special attention is given to the role of sensitivity in the formulation of robust models of this motion. The importance of actuator effects in the reduction of sensitivity is established and used to develop an electromechanical model of the manipulator system

Parameter identification and sensitivity analysis for a robotic manipulator arm

The development of a nonlinear dynamic model for large oscillations of a robotic manipulator arm about a single joint is described. Optimization routines are formulated and implemented for the identification of electrical and physical parameters from dynamic data taken from an industrial robot arm. Special attention is given to difficulties caused by the large sensitivity of the model with respect to unknown parameters. Performance of the parameter identification algorithm is improved by choosing a control input that allows actuator emf to be included in an electro-mechanical model of the manipulator system