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Reposted by Adam Corlett

Thomas Pope @tompope.bsky.social · 6h

My instant reaction to Badenoch's stamp duty announcement for @instituteforgovernment.org.uk

Stamp duty is a bad tax. But abolishing it without a broader reform of property taxes would be a missed opportunity and hard to afford.

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/kemi...

Kemi Badenoch’s promise to abolish stamp duty has ducked tax trade-offs | Institute for Government

Do Kemi Badenoch's stamp duty sums add up?

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · 1d

Good chart in the FT. Ryanair and its customers face much higher carbon prices than many other airlines, because we basically exempt long-haul flights from the Emissions Trading Scheme. That's unfair and inefficient. The UK+EU should fix this & it may even be a revenue-raising option for #Budget2025

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · 2d

In Q2, UK whole economy investment as a share of GDP was its highest on record (since 1997) and has overtaken Germany's

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · 4d

European egg production is moving quickly to 'in-ovo sexing', rather than the mass culling of male chicks. The US and UK are much further behind. innovateanimalag.org/market-penet...

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · 4d

One funny thing in OBR forecasts & maybe a reason to be more fiscally cheerful: they assume markets are right about high future borrowing costs (compare to Europe), but separately assume that inflation will be 2% and nominal pay growth very low. Fiscally the worst of both worlds, but not consistent?

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · 6d

Neat household income chart and pledge tracker from @news.sky.com: news.sky.com/story/keir-s...

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · 8d

Good points, thanks. One response is that the SNP has said it would like devolution of National Insurance, so this is starting to deliver that. And, assuming Scotland puts up IT rates too, that's not so distinct from the political challenge of raising IT in the rest of the UK.

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · 12d

Fiscal credibility matters at #Budget2025. Delivering any Fuel Duty rise at all would help. But 3 changes might make scheduled increases more achievable. 1) Spread out the planned 5p jump; 2) Move from annual to smaller, quarterly changes; 3) Have fixed increases, not higher when inflation is higher

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · 12d

The real value of Fuel Duty has fallen by a third (23p per litre) over the past decade. And the real cost of petrol in
Q3 2025 has been lower than at any other point in decades – narrowly beating the depths of Covid-19.

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · 12d

It's time to end the Fuel Duty freeze. Otherwise, the annual cost of Fuel Duty cuts by this government will top £5bn by 2029 – making the fiscal challenge even harder, and with big opportunity costs: that's more than the cost of scrapping the two-child limit or options for cutting electricity costs

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · Aug 21

Stamp Duty is bad, but it's hard to imagine big progress without better fiscal news

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · Aug 10

Crazy that emails from HMRC, for example, come with a massive link to X

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · Aug 8

If you think Council Tax should be more of a property tax and less of a poll tax, this seems very welcome. And yes that will mean inner London gets less central funding (but it is right to ask what options councils will have to deal with that)

The Institute for Fiscal Studies @theifs.bsky.social · Aug 7

NEW: Major reforms to English council funding will create big winners and losers over the next three years.

📗Read David Phillips' and Kate Ogden's report, funded by @healthfoundation.bsky.social, on how the Fair Funding Review will affect councils across England: ifs.org.uk/publications...

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Reposted by Adam Corlett

Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · May 25

7) For 2030s elections, the basis for designing constituencies could be reconsidered. Most countries use total population rather than registered voters to determine boundaries. Children and (eligible?) adults who don't vote don't choose their MP but why shouldn't they be numerically represented?

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Reposted by Adam Corlett

Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · May 25

6) General election franchise rules need reform really. It doesn't seem sensible anymore that recent arrivals from (Commonwealth) Australia/India/Zimbabwe can vote but long-settled residents from e.g. the Netherlands (non-Commonwealth) can't. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Keir Starmer says it ‘feels wrong’ EU citizens living in UK can’t vote

Change to voting status could enfranchise about 5 million EU citizens over the age of 18

www.theguardian.com

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · Jul 16

New fiscal rule to replace all others: every MP gets a £20,000 bonus after each year in which there was a current budget surplus

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · Jul 7

To avoid confusion, I'll now use megapounds and gigapounds

Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · Jul 7

Fewer than half of adults know how many millions there are in a billion.

(Polling for Tax Policy Associates)

taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/10/26/t...

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · Jul 3

Maybe this is ill-advised but I have diverted my future pension saving away from the US, which seems over-valued given the direction of the country in so many ways

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Reposted by Adam Corlett

The Institute for Fiscal Studies @theifs.bsky.social · Jul 2

NEW: Today we publish the final recommendations from the IFS Pensions Review, with a set of policy reforms to create a pension system fit for the future.

THREAD on our four key themes for reform:

Infographic showing our key proposals for reform.

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · Jun 30

The UC/PIP bill uprates standard UC by 2.3% above inflation in April – so a 6% rise if inflation is 3.7%. A partial undoing of past freezes and a progressive boost to income growth in 2026.

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · Jun 30

Today's figures show Real Household Disposable Income per person grew by 3.1% in 2024-25: the strongest financial year since 2015-16 (albeit helped by unfunded tax cuts).

But Q1 2025 drop supports the idea that strong income growth is unlikely to continue in 2025-26.

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · Jun 29

Good news on wages and incomes, but I don't think we should trust LFS employment trends: payroll data points in the opposite direction bsky.app/profile/hann...

Hannah Slaughter @hannahslaughter.bsky.social · Jun 10

Based on the April data, we estimate a 16-64 employment rate of 75.0 per cent - now similar to what the LFS is showing. A falling employment rate is being driven by both a rising population and, for the past six months, by falling employment.

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · Jun 26

So, we're looking at household-level income, and then you can rank all children from poorest to highest-household-income, and the median is the child who's better/worse off than 50% of children. (Household income is also equivalised to account for the number of people, for fair comparisons.)

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · Jun 26

A favourite stat in my new report: there was no household income gap between children and pensioners in the early 2000s, but by 2023 it was over £5,000 – and it's projected to get bigger www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

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Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · Jun 24

Surprising headline of the day

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