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Taxation, Welfare and Pensions
Professor James Poterba, MIT delivered the annual Geary Lecture entitled "The Challenge of Tax Reform and Expanding the Tax Base" on 28/5/09. Professor Poterba is pictured with Professor Frances Ruane and Professor Tim Callan.
Professor James Poterba, MIT delivered the annual Geary Lecture entitled "The Challenge of Tax Reform and Expanding the Tax Base" on 28/5/09. Professor Poterba is pictured with Professor Frances Ruane and Professor Tim Callan.

Ppt Slides from the Geary Lecture 2009
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Pdf Distributional Impact of Budgets 2009 and 2010
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Taxes and transfers play a key role in influencing both the welfare of households and the behaviour of individuals and firms.This continues to be an important area of research for the Institute. Analyses of tax and benefit policy help to inform public debate and are fed directly into policy fora such as the Commission on Taxation, the Review Group on Child Income Support and the government’s annual budgetary process.
 
Current research includes:
  • Assessing the impact of budgetary policy during
  • Exploring options for future tax and welfare policies
  • Analysis of pension issues in a long-term framework
  • Measuring financial incentives to work
  • Examining Irish tax and welfare policy in an EU context
  • Rebasing the SWITCH tax-benefit model (Simulating Welfare and Income Tax CHanges) using the CSO’s Survey of Income and Living Conditions for 2008
Several projects deal with the assessment of options for future policy, such as the Universal Social Contribution announced in Budget 2010. Others examine the impact of past policy, using the SWITCH tax-benefit model to identify the impact of policy on families at different income levels.
 
Pensions are an area of key importance. A research paper on pensions in 2009 helped to clarify some options which were chosen in the National Pensions Framework in 2010. Further work is under way, to explore pension policy in the context of a life-cycle model. This work is sponsored by the EU’s Directorate General for Employment.
 
Work has recently begun on the Irish contribution to the updating of a tax-benefit model for EU countries – this work is also sponsored by the DG for Employment, and led by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex. This framework helps to underpin accurate comparisons of the tax and welfare systems of different EU countries, and their outcomes in terms of different measures of welfare.
 
The overall research programme is guided by a Steering Group, which has helped to enhance the contribution of the Institute’s analysis of tax and welfare issues to policy debate and policy formation. The Steering Group is made up of representatives of the Department of Finance and the Department of Social and Family Affairs, along with key ESRI staff.
 
 
Future Research
Areas of interest for future research include:
  • Equity and efficiency in state support for private and public pensions.
  • Taxes and subsidies on housing.
  • Behavioural responses to tax and welfare policies.
  • Environmental taxes: revenue recycling and distributional issues.
 


Programme Coordinator – Tim Callan

Other members of staff who work in this area include: Claire Keane, Sean Lyons, Richard Tol and John Walsh.