Income

An adequate income is key to improving financial well-being. We’re interested in helping people on low to middle incomes and how certain factors can make a big difference.

Our Income programme focuses on four areas:

We are particularly interested in pay and conditions for young adults and those in insecure work, including the self-employed. We also want to explore how changes to shareholder dividends and wage distribution (including greater transparency) could increase pay for those on lower incomes.

Our focus here is on pension income rather than pension savings, though we do include this as part of our Assets programme. We are interested in people’s experience navigating the complexities related to pension freedoms and ways to improve this experience. We also look at how to better support those still facing hardship in retirement.

We want to improve the taxation system, ensuring it is fair to those on low-to-middle incomes and adequately meets the needs of the public services it funds. This includes work in relation to closing tax gaps and loopholes (for example between employees, the self-employed and company owner-managers); and reviewing the scope of taxes.

We are keen to investigate ways that the welfare benefits system could be improved. This includes work on payment levels, assessment processes, conditionality and sanctions, as well as more radical rethinking of the benefits system. We are also interested in improving public attitudes in relation to social security.