Tax Policy Foundation Programme

Overview

🕮 Off the shelf (OTS)

The programme provides:

An overview of the UK tax system (relative significance of difference taxes, and who pays them) and the UK tax policy-making process (including the role of key institutions such as HMT, HMRC, OBR, OTS, Parliament, PAC, and NAO)

An introduction to key concepts in tax policy analysis (tax base, incidence, efficiency, progressivity, neutrality, avoidance/evasion, etc.)

Theory and evidence on the macroeconomics of taxation, including comparison of different countries’ tax yields and tax mixes, and the relationship between tax and different approaches to the welfare state and the wider economy

Theory and evidence on the microeconomics of taxation, with a particular focus on the behavioural economics of tax compliance, and the capacity of tax policy to promote desired behaviours/discourage undesired behaviours

An overview of tax administration, compliance management and enforcement within the UK

An introduction to tax law, including the Parliamentary processes by which tax policies become legislation

An exploration of the UK’s different revenue streams (which will cover personal income taxes, consumption taxes, business income taxes, local government taxes, capital taxes, and other taxes), covering the basics of how the various tax instruments work (tax base, tax rates, reporting and enforcement), introduction to current government policy plans and key debates, stakeholders and distributive implications, and relevant international developments.

Learners may have substantial prior experience in policy-facing roles, and/or may have attended prior training in policy skills, but will generally be new to the field of tax policy. The goal of the course is to introduce learners to the different ways in which governments raise revenue.