UK

According to The Economist, these turbulent times have completed the transformation of Britain into a new country, characterized by political instability and low growth, and subordinated to financial markets. Britaly…

‘Liability Driven Investment’ or ‘LDI’ is both a nonsense and a truism, and is now a byword for a disaster in the UK financial system. Here is what happened. As…

The UK labour market at the beginning of 2016 is in a rather good shape. The rate of unemployment has decreased steadily in the last two years and is now…

Celebrating that the end of the world has been temporarily postponed (presumably due to government planning) the IREF Paris team wishes you Happy Holidays.

In lieu of Season’s Greetings, our Swedish and German colleagues have devised Calendars, revealing both government waste and clever advice on taxes. These may be viewed online at Skattebetalarna and Steuerzahler.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance has launched a petition on its website (freezebusinessrates.org) to enable taxpayers to appeal to their members of Parliament on business rates.

Corporate taxation in the United Kingdom rose by 4.6 per cent in 2011, by 5.5 per cent in 2012. Yet the coalition government seems set to implement a further 2.6 per cent hike in April 2013.

Our colleagues at the TPA have campaigned successfully against union subsidies. This means that the number of civil servants working for the unions at the taxpayers’ expense will now be…

The Taxpayers’ Alliance has published a summary of its final report, proposing a Single Income Tax to tax streams of income once. As stated by Allister Heath, Chairman of the TPA Tax Commission, “the old order is broken and needs radical reform. But we are also realists: our proposals, while far-reaching, are practical”.

The Institute of Economic Affairs is publishing a study on the burden of tax compliance and administration in the UK.

This monograph shows the severely regressive nature of the costs of complying with the UK tax system – small firms suffer far more than large firms from the imposition of government bureaucracy related to tax collection.

The UK post office Royal Mail is at least as fervent adept to strikes as the French Poste office. The Unions chose the open clash with the managers, rather than to follow the privatization plan. It is true that the privatization of Royal Mail would compromise a lot of the “traditions” in the company. For example, in the beginning of the decade 10 000 of the 170 000 employees were missing every working day, without any valuable reason. The cost of this absenteeism was 350 mln. of pounds per year.