The past 14 years have witnessed an enormous amount of reform to the tax and benefit system. While it is tempting for politicians to draw attention to one set of reforms or another, what matters for household incomes is the whole system. In this report, we study the impact of policy changes to...

The aim of this report, the IFS's first in-depth analysis of the Scottish Government Budget, is to look at some of the key implications for the coming year, and for the longer term. We do not attempt to cover all of the different services that the Scottish Government is responsible for, or all...

In April, the UK entered the second year of a six-year freeze in the cash value of income tax thresholds - a policy set to become the single biggest tax-raising measure since the 1970s. This is the latest in a long line of measures (by successive governments) that have hugely increased the scope...

How have employment, earnings and incomes performed in Scotland compared with the rest of the UK? What drives geographic inequalities within Scotland?

This chapter of our second annual Budget Report looks beyond 2024-25 to the medium-term outlook for the Scottish Government's funding, and the implications of the funding picture for the choices and trade-offs faced when allocating funding between areas of the budget. The Scottish Government had...

The Scottish Government's Budget for 2024-25 takes place at a time of particular uncertainty about the future funding environment. UK government spending plans both for the coming year and for later years seem likely to be topped up, but when and by how much is unclear. The current UK government...

This chapter of our second annual Budget Report looks at Scottish tax policy and revenue, the overall amount of funding available for Scottish public services, and planned spending on different individual services in the coming financial year, 2024-25. In several important respects, the Scottish...

The past 14 years have witnessed an enormous amount of reform to the tax and benefit system. While it is tempting for politicians to draw attention to one set of reforms or another, what matters for household incomes is the whole system. In this report, we study the impact of policy changes to...

The aim of this report, the IFS's first in-depth analysis of the Scottish Government Budget, is to look at some of the key implications for the coming year, and for the longer term. We do not attempt to cover all of the different services that the Scottish Government is responsible for, or all...