Abstract
Local financial problems in Britain stem from the fact that local authorities are caught in the middle of opposing sets of pressures: on the spending side, local costs and demands have edged slowly but steadily upwards; on the income side, the sources of revenue available to local government are limited in number, and those that are available are far from satisfactory. In sum, local authorities are subject to a resource squeeze in which spending has been forced upwards, while income has dragged slowly behind. This chapter will consider the income side of the equation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Local Government Finance (Layfield Committee), Cmnd 6453 (London: HMSO, 1976) 365–6.
For the best account of the rates see N.P. Hepworth, The Finance of Local Government, revised 5th edn (London: Allen & Unwin, 1979), ch. 4.
For local taxes in other nations see A.H. Marshall, Local Government Finance (The Hague: International Union of Local Authorities, 1969)
L.J. Sharpe (ed.), The Local Fiscal Crisis (London: Sage, 1981).
Evidence on the decline of local property taxes in five other West European nations can be found in K. Newton et al., Balancing the Books (London: Sage, 1980), 140.
For an account of this tendency for income and other buoyant taxes to increase their real yield in inflationary times (known as fiscal drag) see David Heald, Public Expenditure (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1983), 285–8
A. Robinson and C. Sandford, Tax Policy Making in the United Kingdom (London: Heinemann, 1983), 6.
The Allen Committee discusses the factors which make the rates a visible tax: Committee of Inquiry into the Impact of Rates on Households (Allen Committee), Cmnd 2582 (London: HMSO, 1965), 17.
CSO, National Income and Expenditure (London: HMSO, 1981).
CSO, Financial Statistics (London: HMSO, 1981), 26–9.
For evidence on public attitudes towards the rates see Committee of Inquiry into Local Government Finance, 366. For evidence about the US see T.N. Clark and L.C. Ferguson, City Money (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 89 and 248.
C.D. Foster et al., Financing Local Government in a Unitary State (London: Allen & Unwin, 1980), 316.
John Stewart and George Jones, The Case for Local Government (London: Allen & Unwin, 1983), 58.
See Deutscher Industrie-Und Handelstag, German Tax law, (Bonn: DIHT, 1982)
Department of Environment and the Welsh Office, Local Government Financial Statistics 1980/81 (London: HMSO, 1983), Table 21.
See H.W. Richardson, The New Urban Economics (London: Pion, 1977), 37 and 142
H.W. Richardson, The Economics of Urban Size (Farnborough: Saxon House/Lexington, 1973), 91 and 186–7.
M. Waslyenko, ‘The location of firms: the role of taxes and fiscal incentives’, in R. Bahl (ed.), Urban Government Finance: Emerging Trends (Beverly Hills, Ca.: Sage, 1981), 155–90.
Roger Friedland, Power and Crisis in the City (London: Macmillan, 1982), 44 and 46.
W. Grant, Independent Local Politics in England and Wales, (Farnborough: Saxon House, 1977), 87.
P. Shipley, Directory of Pressure Groups and Representative Associations (Epping: Bowker, 1979), 4.
N. Nugent, ‘The Rate Payers’, in R. King and N. Nugent (eds), Respectable Rebels — Middle Class Campaigns in Britain in the 1970s (Sevenoaks: Hodder & Stoughton, 1979)
R. King and N. Nugent, ‘Ratepayers’ Associations in Newcastle and Wakefield’ in J. Garrard et al., (eds), The Middle Class in Politics (Farnborough: Saxon House, 1978).
On the subsidies paid to owner-occupiers and council tenants see J. Le Grand, The Strategy of Equality (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982), 82–95.
An account of the CBI recent interest in rates and local government is given in T. May, ‘The Businessman’s Burden: Rates and the CBI’, Politics, 4 (April 1984), 34–8.
William Hampton, Democracy and Community (Oxford University Press, 1970), 246–77.
F. Bealey, J. Blondel and W.P. McCann, Constituency Politics (London: Faber & Faber, 1965), 319–23.
A.P. Brier and R.E. Dowse, ‘The politics of the apolitical’, Political Studies, XVII, 3 (September 1969)
Frank Bealey and John Sewel, The Politics of Independence: A Study of a Scottish Town (Aberdeen University Press, 1981), 233–42.
J. Gibson, ‘Local “Overspending”: why the Government have only themselves to blame’, Public Money, 3 (December 1983), 19.
R. Greenwood, ‘Fiscal pressure and local government in England and Wales’, in Christopher Hood and Maurice Wright (eds), Big Government in Hard Times (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1981), 81–6.
See the excellent study by R.J. Bennett, Central Grants to Local Governments (Cambridge University Press, 1982).
J. Gibson, ‘Block grant and holdback penalties — the manipulated grant system’, Local Government Studies, 9 (July/August 1983), 12–16.
An account of this sad history is provided in D.E. Ashford, ‘A Victorian drama: the fiscal subordination of British local government’, in D.E. Ashford (ed.), Financing Urban Government in the Welfare State (London: Croom Helm, 1980), 71–96.
Copyright information
© 1985 K. Newton and T. J. Karran
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Newton, K., Karran, T.J. (1985). The Squeeze on Income. In: The Politics of Local Expenditure. Public Policy and Politics. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17849-0_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17849-0_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-34427-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-17849-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Economics & Finance CollectionEconomics and Finance (R0)