Council Spending Uncovered: Pensions
The third part of the CSU series provides details on how councils spend a fifth of council tax on pensions in 2007-08 and how thousands of councillors are on the local government pension scheme. Read more...
Quango spending on ‘communication’ soars
New research from the TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA) details the steep rise in ‘communication’ spending among Britain’s quangos. Read more...
How the CAP Costs Families Nearly £400 a Year
With the onset of a recession, family budgets are tight. Despite agricultural commodity prices falling from their recent exceptional high, there are still global concerns at a food crisis. Saving £400 a year, over one per cent of average household, post-tax income,would be a welcome boost for many families struggling... Read more...
Middle Management Pay
The second part of the CSU series shows that the number of council staff earning more than £50,000 has soared by more than 20 per cent in 2007-08. Read more...
Regional Development Agencies: Having a ball at the 2008 Party Conferences
Regional Development Agencies have been an expensive failure. Despite over £15 billion in taxpayer funding, they have proved ineffective in reducing regional income disparities, incapable of fostering sustainable economic growth and have frequently misused taxpayers’ money. Following the TaxPayers' Alliance's detailed analysis of RDA activity earlier this year (to read... Read more...
Local Authority Publicity Spending
In December 2007, the TaxPayers’ Alliance produced the first ever examination of the growth of town hall spending on publicity over the last decade. Read more...
The Cost of the EU's Renewables Policy
The report, by leading economist Ruth Lea, sets out the range of estimates of the cost of the EU's renewables policies. It also shows that Britain is being asked to make a significantly larger adjustment than most other member states. Read more...
RDAs at the 2008 Party Conferences
The note reveals that the Regional Development Agencies spent over £285,000 at the party conferences. Read more...
How Inept Regulations and Poor Policy Decisions Drove the Financial Crisis
The report provides a detailed account of the many ways in which inept regulations and poor policy choices drove the build-up of the crisis and exacerbated the crisis once it got underway. Read more...
Public Sector Rich List 2008
The latest edition of the Public Sector Rich List details the remuneration of 387 people in the public sector earning more than £150,000. Read more...
TaxPayers' Alliance Response to the Conservative Tax Plan
The response attacks the plans for being too timid, too complex and poorly targetted. It calls for a package of cuts in headline tax rates. Read more...
TaxPayers' Alliance Response to the Government's £50 Billion Bailout
The paper responds to the Government's bailout plan, outlining several ways in which the Government can and should limit the amount of taxpayers' money the banks need. Read more...
The Case Against a Mandatory Target for Emissions Cuts
The research note shows how a binding 80 per cent target for emissions cuts would lead to falling GDP unless radical improvements in emissions intensity can be achieved, and argues that failure to think through such a transformation would do enormous damage to Britain's economy and exporting emissions overseas. Read more...
Brussels or Whitehall: Locating the Source of the UK's Regulatory Burden
The paper presents a comprehensive picture of the sources of the UK’s regulatory burden, showing that blame cannot be laid at one door, with both the EU and Whitehall at fault. Read more...
Total Lifetime Tax Update
The 2007 Total Lifetime Tax update shows that the average household pays over £600,000, in today’s prices, in direct and indirect taxes. Read more...
Gordon Brown’s Economic Failure
The report demolishes what is left of Gordon Brown’s reputation for effective economic and public sector management. It shows that Britain’s performance has been poor across the board, and left more vulnerable to the downturn than our international competitors, as a result of his policies. Read more...
Unequal Shares: The Definitive Guide to the Barnett Formula
The report provides a comprehensive review of the Barnett Formula and its precursors, showing how it has led to a startling gap between public spending in England and in the three better-funded devolved territories, and argues that only genuine fiscal devolution can solve the problem. Read more...
The Burden of Green Taxes
The second edition of the TPA's green taxes paper shows that environmental taxation is set above the level of the social cost of Britain's carbon footprint and presents estimates of the excess burden of green taxes in local authority areas across the country. Read more...
The Case for Abolishing Regional Development Agencies
The third paper in the Structure of Government series finds that RDAs have not prevented the gap between England's best and worst performing regions widening in the past decade, and recommends that the Agencies be abolished, with the savings used to fund a cut in the small companies rate of... Read more...
The Cost of Crime
With crime levels top of the list of voters’ concerns, this paper, for the first time, details the cost of recorded crime per person in each of the police force areas in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2007, the latest year for which data is available. Read more...
The Cost of Big Brother Government
This report analyses the effectiveness of the different measures the Government has used to combat the terrorist threat to Britain, and finds that the cost of “Big Brother Government” has reached almost £20billion. Read more...
The Failure of Government Management
The second paper in the Structure of Government Series reports the findings of a survey by the TaxPayers’ Alliance of the UK’s 100 top business leaders, and reveals that Government management practices fall far short of those FTSE 100 Chief Executives believe are necessary to effectively manage large organisations. Read more...
The Looming Winter of Discontent
This report sets out how Britain faces a looming winter of discontent as public sector pay costs have increased massively in recent years, leaving little money left, and how public sector staff are going on strike far more frequently than their private sector counterparts. Read more...
The Great British TaxPayer Rip-Off
Written by former Treasury civil servant Mike Denham, this report establishes the vast scale of Britain's taxpayer rip-off with taxes rising, charges rising, and services cut. Read more...