The IFS has published its analysis of tax and benefit proposals from the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats on Tuesday 28 April. At a press briefing IFS researchers discussed the main proposed changes to income tax, mansion tax, other taxes, and benefits. Presentations from the event are available.

The IFS has published its analysis of the public finance plans of the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party on Thursday 23 April. At a press briefing IFS researchers presented the implications of manifesto commitments for debt and borrowing, and for overall levels of tax and spending. Presentations from the event are available.

Yesterday, the SNP published their election manifesto. Plans for full fiscal autonomy – now renamed “full fiscal responsibility” – remain as a medium term goal. But, the manifesto suggests that such plans would take “several years” to negotiate and implement. In the meantime, priority would be placed on moving beyond the recommendations of the Smith Commission with the devolution of corporation tax, National Insurance Contributions (NICs), and the welfare system.

In this Observation we examine what these plans would mean for the Scottish Government’s budget and powers, and the challenges involved in moving beyond them to reach full fiscal responsibility for Scotland. 

The Liberal Democrats' manifesto highlights a commitment to protect education spending per pupil in England for 2–19 year olds in real terms. Labour and the Conservatives have also announced protections for education spending in England. In this Observation, we analyse the implications of these different protections for how schools and education spending will evolve over the next parliament. 

The Conservatives and the Labour party have proposed significantly reducing the amount of income tax relief available on the pension contributions of those fortunate enough to have an income in excess of £150,000. This IFS observation argues that both reforms would add considerable complexity to the pensions tax regime and would have the potential to distort savings behaviour and work incentives in a significant and undesirable way.

The Conservatives have announced that they would introduce a new Inheritance Tax allowance for main residences that are transferred to children or grandchildren. This new IFS observation describes the policy and argues that if £1 billion is to be spent on cutting Inheritance Tax an increase in the threshold would be preferable.

Yesterday the Labour Party proposed abolishing ‘non-dom’ status except for people who only come to the UK for a short period.  Foreign domiciliaries, or ‘non-doms’, are people who live in the UK but whose permanent home for tax purposes (’domicile’) is considered to be elsewhere. Today's Observation sets out what is known, and what is not, about non-doms and the likely effects of Labour’s proposal.

In his last Budget before the election, George Osborne announced a further liberalisation for those who have saved in defined contribution pensions. From April 2016, those who have purchased annuities will be able to sell them without facing the tax charges that currently apply. But who stands to be affected by this policy? Will they be able to make good decisions about whether or not to sell? And will there be anyone willing to buy their annuity from them? This Observation provides some initial thoughts and analysis to help assess what effect this policy might have.

The Conservative Party have claimed that under Labour there would be a £3,028 tax rise for every working household. This new Observation article explains this number and assesses whether this would actually be the case.

The RAB charge – the government subsidy inherent in the student loan system – has been a prominent focus of debates on higher education funding. Researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies argue in this Observation article that the focus on RAB comes at the expense of a wider discussion around how much the government should subsidise the higher education system as a whole, and how best to deliver this. This follows a new IFS report which examines the funding system for higher education and implications for public finances.

An article by IFS researchers, commissioned and published by The Lancet, considers the rising demand and cost pressures for the NHS and how these might be addressed under the parties’ plans for public spending over the next few years.

Overall current or day-to-day school spending in England has been remarkably well protected under the coalition government. Over the next parliament, current spending on schools could be squeezed harder. Although the commitments made by the three main UK parties are subtly different, they could all imply real spending per pupil falling by 7% or more between 2014–15 and 2019–20. These are among the main findings of a new IFS Election Briefing Note on schools and education spending in England, funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

IFS researchers presented their analysis of the Chancellor's pre-election Budget at a briefing on Thursday 19 March. The presentations are now available on this website.

Try our interactive spending tool, updated to reflect Budget announcements.

As part of its deficit reduction programme, the coalition government has made tax changes whose direct impact is to reduce borrowing by an estimated £16.4 billion in 2015–16. This net figure belies much larger changes, with £64.3 billion of tax rises being partly offset by £48.0 billion of tax cuts. But all this activity has done little to improve the structure of the tax system.

A new tool launched on the IFS election website today allows you to act as Chancellor and set your own Budget. Complete with data visualisation and infographics, the interactive tool guides you through the challenging tradeoffs involved when deciding how much to tax, how much to spend, and how much to borrow over the next few years.

This observation article discusses the Scottish Government's annual Government Expenditure and Revenues Scotland (GERS) publication covering 2013–14. The key finding is that Scotland’s overall budget deficit of 8.1% of GDP during 2013–14 was significantly higher than the UK wide deficit of 5.6% of GDP. These figures are placed in the context of the evolving constitutional debate – including the debate about whether Scotland should become “fully fiscally autonomous”.

The spending power of local authorities in England has been cut substantially during this parliament. A new Election Briefing Note from IFS researchers shows that local authorities’ spending per person has been cut by 23.4% in real terms between 2009–10 and 2014–15, using a comparable definition of net spending on services over time by single-tier and county councils. However, the size of cuts varied markedly across the country. On the whole, more deprived areas and those that saw faster population growth have seen larger cuts. Without a change in policy, any further cuts over the next parliament are also likely to affect the same places again.

New IFS projections suggest median (middle) household income in 2014–15 is at around the same level as it was in 2007–08 before the recession. But the recovery in living standards that began in 2011–12 has been much slower than after the three previous recessions. These are among the main findings of a new IFS Election Briefing Note on living standards published today, funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

Ed Miliband and Ed Balls today announced that a Labour Government would significantly reduce the generosity of the income tax treatment of private pensions. Those with incomes above £150,000 a year would only be able to receive income tax relief at a rate of 20% (rather than the 50% marginal rate of income tax they would face under Labour), the annual pension contribution limit would be reduced by a quarter from £40,000 to £30,000 and the lifetime limit would be cut by one-fifth from £1.25m to £1m. This observation explains that, while there is a case for making some elements of tax-relief on pensions saving less generous, these reforms would be a step in the wrong direction.

This briefing note looks at the implications of Labour's proposals for higher education funding plans. One of the authors, IFS researcher Jack Britton said: "Labour have chosen to keep university funding constant in the short-run, but the switch from fees to grants increases the cost to government in the long-run, because some fee loans would have been repaid, while grants will not. High income graduates are the primary beneficiaries, as they are the most likely to repay their loans under the current system. Lower income graduates will be largely unaffected, as their income is not high enough to repay their loans under either system."

Corporate tax has rarely received as much attention as in recent years. The coalition government has enacted a series of policy changes – the most prominent being an 8 percentage point cut in the main rate – with an explicit aim of increasing the competitiveness of the UK’s corporate tax system. Concurrently, there have been prominent debates about the types of policies individual governments use to attract mobile investments, about corporate tax avoidance and about how the international corporate tax system can be improved. The latest IFS election briefing note reviews the policy changes since 2010 and assesses where this leaves the UK regime in an international context. Despite the large number of changes in this parliament, challenges remain for the next government. In particular, the UK has a corporate tax base that embeds a number of distortions, we are likely to face further international competitive pressure and we must balance the desire to be competitive with the aim of cooperating with international attempts to reduce avoidance.

The UK has witnessed a substantial and sustained increase in house prices since the 1990s. This long-term rise in house prices, and the financial crisis which led to falls in real incomes and reduced availability of high loan-to-value mortgages, are perhaps the main causes of widespread concern about the ‘affordability’ of housing. Today's IFS observation briefly discusses the findings of a new election briefing note funded by the Nuffield Foundation, also published today, which sets out a range of evidence on how the affordability of housing, and – related to that – the kinds of housing that people access, have been evolving.

The IFS Green Budget 2015, in association with ICAEW and funded by the Nuffield Foundation with analysis from Oxford Economics, is published on 4 February 2015. Debt is set to peak at over 80% of national income. The deficit is still more than 5% of national income. The fact that they remain so high largely reflects poor economic performance at the start of this parliament. But real spending cuts have been substantially less than originally planned, no net additional tax rises have been implemented, and tax revenues have proved less responsive to the economic growth we have had than was expected. Difficult choices lie ahead.

The coalition government has implemented changes to the benefit system that mean spending in 2015–16 will be £16.7 billion (7%) lower than it would otherwise have been. Real terms benefit spending, however, is forecast to be almost exactly the same in 2015–16 as it was in 2010–11, at £220 billion. This reflects the effect of underlying economic and demographic factors which are pushing up spending – most importantly an ageing population, but also weak wage growth and rising private rents.

The coalition government has introduced a large number of tax and benefit changes during its five years in office. In this briefing note, we examine the effect of all these changes on households' disposable incomes. In other election briefing notes, we will describe these changes, their individual merits and how they change the shape of the tax and benefit system as a whole.

As we launch this minisite in January 2015, here are some highlights of what IFS analysis so far shows in the run-up to the general election 2015.

Each of the three main UK political parties has stated an objective for reducing borrowing over the next parliament. Somewhat oddly, each of these targets would allow a looser fiscal position in the medium-term than is currently planned by the coalition government. This briefing note describes the government’s fiscal targets and the three main parties’ proposed fiscal stances.

The Autumn Statement 2014 was delivered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, on 3 December. IFS researchers presented their analysis at a briefing on the following day.

This presentation, about choices for the future squeeze on spending, was given after the autumn statement 2014.