IFS warns Rachel Reeves against ‘half-baked dash for revenue’

The IFS says that although the UK is in ‘a fiscal bind’ it could raise significant funds by reforming taxes on savings and investment income, such as rental income, dividend income, interest income, self-employment profits or capital gains. Photograph: Yau Ming Low/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Rachel Reeves must avoid “a half-baked dash for revenue” or risk damaging economic growth as the chancellor seeks to close a large gap in next month’s budget, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said.

The tax and spending thinktank has warned there was a danger the chancellor would create “unnecessary economic damage” if she chooses to stitch together unrelated tax-raising measures to cut the shortfall in government revenues and keep within her fiscal rules.