The article reviews the limited existing social policy literature on taxation and sets out a case for the incorporation of the study of taxation into the accepted remit of social policy. Social policy has historically been concerned with the services and benefits which flow from public expenditure, and people’s experiences of them, rather than with taxation, and the contributions by individual researchers have tended to remain marginal to the main focus of social policy. The article offers a speculative account as to why taxation has remained peripheral to social policy and presents three arguments for the mainstreaming of tax in social policy’s domain of study. These concern the role of taxation in shaping the distribution of resources, a fundamental pre-occupation of social policy; the contribution social policy scholars can make to shaping a new discourse surrounding taxation, foregrounding issues of equity and need; and how social policy’s engagement with taxation can influence the politics of the welfare state.
The provision of taxation relief to support pension savings has become a large and expensive aspect of the welfare state in many countries. Among OECD member states this exceeds $200 billion in revenue forgone each year. Previous research has consistently found this fiscal welfare to have pronounced regressive distributive outcomes. However, little is known about the gendered impact of these fiscal welfare supports, a void this article addresses. Using data for Ireland the article finds that the current structure of fiscal welfare supports notably favours males over females. Nominal contribution levels are higher among males, and males are more likely to be active contributors to pension savings. The associated tax supports are consequently skewed, with two-thirds received by men and one-third by women. This outcome suggests a continuation of the gender earnings gap into retirement and a discontinuity between longevity expectations and tax policy supports for pension provision.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.