Most analysis of the impact of taxes and benefits on households is cross-sectional, with individuals classified as rich or poor, and gains and losses calculated, using a single snapshot of data. In this report, we argue the case for taking a longer-run perspective. In particular, we show that...

This paper examines the distributional impact of increases to out-of-work transfers, increases to work-contingent transfers, and increases in higher rates of income tax over the whole of life. We find that, in contrast to what is implied by standard snapshot analyses, increases to...

The distributional impact of proposed reforms plays a central role in public debates around tax and transfer policy. We show that accounting for realistic patterns of mobility in employment, earnings and household circumstances over the life-cycle greatly affects our assessment of the...

Most analysis of the effects of the tax and benefit system is based on snapshot information about a single cross-section of people. Such an approach gives only a partial picture because it cannot account for the fact that circumstances change over life. This paper investigates how our impression...

This document describes the UK tax and benefit system between April 1990 and April 2010, as implemented in FORTAX, a microsimulation library written in Fortran. It begins with an overview of FORTAX and the information it calculates. Subsequent sections describe the taxes and benefits implemented...

Relatively little is known about the roles that taxes and transfers play in redistributing resources and providing insurance across individuals and across the lifecycle. We embed these alternative roles in a lifecycle model, allowing us to demonstrate what the tax and transfer system achieves...