UK Tax Administration Research Centre to open to support growth

The official launch of the Tax Administration Research Centre (TARC) is taking place on Tuesday 12 February at a reception being held at Church House Conference Centre in Westminster.

The centre is a joint partnership between the University of Exeter and the Institute of Fiscal Studies, and received funding of £2 million from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and Her Majesty's Treasury (HMT).

The aim of the centre is to support high quality research and related activities on tax administration, with a view to strengthening the theoretical and empirical understanding of the delivery and design of tax operations and policies.

The centre pursues a multidisciplinary research programme with a research team that includes economists, accountants, experimentalists and psychologists. It engages with tax administrations, the media and researchers to disseminate this information throughout the policy and academic world. TARC also has exceptionally strong international connections and is developing links with experts at home and abroad, whose visits to the centre provide a forum for sharing knowledge and collaborating on new ideas.

Director of the Centre, Gareth Myles said: "The new Centre will deliver an improved understanding of how to enhance tax policies and administrative practices. It will achieve this by undertaking research of the highest academic standards in partnership with the HMRC and HMT. The outcome will be improvements in customer experience, economic performance and social cohesion."

ESRC Chief Executive Paul Boyle said: "The Tax Centre is an important new investment for the ESRC. It is strongly aligned to one of our strategic priorities for economic growth and will help enable the development of robust government and private sector strategies to ensure the sustainable growth of the UK economy."