Adam Corlett

And if we do want a subsidy to boost new car sales, that should surely now be focused on BEVs (rather than giving the most subsidy to the most polluting cars) - while being mindful of car adaptation needs and charging difficulties for some.

How much we should spend on PIP is one thing, but I think there's a good case that Motability's tax breaks are weirdly distortionary. It buys new cars without paying CO2-linked VED, or most VAT, and then sells them on after a few years. That's why 1 in 5 new cars now go through Motability.

Huel is Fine Breaking down the issues with Consumer Reports' investigative reporting on lead levels in protein supplements

I laughed about Huel being “spiritually bad.” I also wish one could just trust media outlets that break news about supposedly troubling contamination to not lean into the story at the cost of scientific accuracy.

Landmark global shipping deal abandoned under US threats President Trump intervened in the talks calling the deal a

The Government has already said that “subject to negotiations, we intend to expand the UK ETS to include emissions from international voyages”, like the EU. This news adds to the case for doing that – and HMT could even score ~£0.4bn a year for it at the Budget. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It would cost £5 billion to keep freezing Fuel Duty, by 2029. It would cost £4 billion to take social levies, environmental levies and the Carbon Price Support off electricity bills and slash public EV charging VAT. Which is the better option?

UK inflation over the past year was very concentrated in April. So perhaps we'll see a big fall in the annual rate in April 2026 (published in May) when that drops out.

I think that's less of a problem when changing taxes on pension contributions. I agree it's relevant for pensioner taxes, but it's also impossible to guarantee predictable effective tax rates and state pension levels decades in advance, so some risk is unavoidable.

Cutting pension salary sacrifice relief would certainly be a better option (fairer across businesses and workers, and more reforming) than extending the employer NI threshold freeze by another two years, which must be a strong Budget possibility.

A limited step would be to reduce the tax relief available through pension salary sacrifice. This makes pension taxes even more arbitrary, based on whether employers offer a scheme – particularly excluding small businesses and the lowest paid. Halving the employer saving would raise over £1bn a year

HMT could raise a lot of £ here. But it’s not a good time for a huge change, given April’s employer NI rise. And because it would only affect employees, any change would need to be part of a balanced package that *reduces* the tax bias against employees overall (especially vs self-employment).

#Budget2025 could look at a >£20bn pension tax relief – the lack of employer NICs on employer pension contributions. This is a very generous part of the pension tax system. And because we treat *employee* contributions differently, it leads to arbitrarily different tax rates for different workers.

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?

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...

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

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

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...

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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)

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?

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

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...

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

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

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

Infographic showing our key proposals for reform.

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: