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Introduced in the late 1990s, tax credits grew under successive Labour governments to become a cornerstone of UK social policy. Distinguished from traditional welfare policies by their target group and their mode of administration, and with goals that appeared capable of commanding support across the ideological spectrum, tax credits until recently seemed to hold the key to tackling poverty in a politically popular manner. But since 2010 the tax credit system has been systematically dismantled, initially qualitatively and latterly also quantitatively. This paper discusses the multiple factors that help to explain the rapid fall from grace in the UK of this liberal approach to supporting the incomes of poor working households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the development of two features of central Italian society in the post-Roman period (approximately the mid-fifth to the mid-ninth centuries) that have been thought to have affected significantly the condition of life of the peasantry there: rural settlement and the taxation system. It argues that we should be wary of attempting to reconstruct the settlement landscape from the surviving documents: too often, references to agrarian structures are misconstrued as references to settlements. The shape of the latter is rarely visible in the textual evidence, but can be appreciated far more certainly from archaeological surveys and excavations, which present a picture of the evolution of the human landscape that is far more varied than a simple transition ‘from villa to village’. Documentary sources are more helpful in tracing the fate of the Roman taxation system. They point to structural continuities in the way that the peasantry was exploited that did not significantly vary between neighbouring political territories, and that reveal how the powerful continued to affect both the location and the condition of peasant life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a puzzle over why inheritance taxes are unpopular relative to other taxes since they are progressive and, assuming they are spent wisely on welfare goods, more people should gain than lose through inheritance tax. I examine four reasons why inheritance tax might be unpopular (a) propaganda, (b) fiscal illusion, (c) framing and developing the latter (d) an evolutionary basis in human reasoning. The latter suggests that the relative popularity of a tax is related to how far the money taxed is already ‘in the possession’ of the person taxed. Given these reasons I make a suggestion and examine some proposal for making inheritance tax less unpopular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims The aim of this paper is to study short-term changes in alcohol consumption by subgroups of the population in Denmark, Finland and southern Sweden following large-scale decreases in alcohol taxation in Denmark and Finland and large increases in travellers' allowances in Finland and Sweden. Design General population random samples surveyed before and after the changes, using northern Sweden as a control site. Setting Denmark, Finland, southern Sweden and northern Sweden. Participants Respondents aged 16–69 years. Measurements Volume of drinking is the main measure reported. Changes are examined by gender, age, income and year 2003 consumption level. Results Consumption decreased or remained the same among women and men in all three study sites. Relative changes were similar across subgroups of age, gender and income in all countries. In absolute terms, there was a consistent differential change by age in Denmark, Finland and Southern Sweden, with the higher level of the young and lower level of the old converging. Women's and men's consumption converged in Finland and southern Sweden. The changes did not differ systematically by income. Changes were not larger among heavier drinkers. Conclusions The results did not confirm expectations: an increase in consumption larger than that in the control site could not be shown in any of the countries or subgroups of the population. If there has been an effect – as shown in aggregate data in Finland – it seems to have been stronger among the old than the young and, in Finland and southern Sweden, among women rather than men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compares the anti-poverty effectiveness of taxes and income transfers among Western welfare states. Decomposition of poverty outcome into the level of market-generated poverty, the overall level of welfare efforts and the poverty reduction efficiency of taxes and transfers; Finding that the extents of poverty differ widely across welfare states; Impact of level of redistributional efforts.