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Building Social Policies in Fiscal Welfare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2020

Adrian Sinfield
Adrian Sinfield*
Affiliation:
School of Social and Political Science, Edinburgh University, E-mail: Adrian.Sinfield@ed.ac.uk
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Abstract

The ways that social spending policies are run by fiscal welfare through the tax system remain relatively neglected, while the costs and impact of public expenditure are constantly under scrutiny. Mostly means-enhancing in contrast to much means-tested public spending, the costs of social tax reliefs are little examined, their distributional impact even less so. This article considers what is needed to provide a better basis for the development of robust and flexible policies for establishing, managing and evaluating fiscal welfare that can contribute to building a more open and equal society. Particular attention is given to increasing accountability and assessing tax and public spending activities together when they benefit the same target group; and to reducing inconsistencies of treatment in comparable tax and public schemes.

Keywords

Fiscal welfaresocial tax expenditurestaxationinequalitypre-distribution
Type
Themed Section: Taxation and Social Policy
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 487 - 499
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

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