Tax bands should be abolished and income tax and employee National Insurance contributions (NICs) combined into a single tax ‘schedule’, with all sources of income taxed at the same rate, and on the same basis in order to create a more efficient and progressive tax system, according to the rightwing thinktank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)

This week marks National Apprenticeship Week, but with the number of new apprenticeship starts falling by a quarter last year, and calls for changes to the operation of the apprentice levy, there are questions about the ability to meet the government’s commitment to an extra three million apprentices by 2020

Following an urgent application by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Russell Downs, Douglas Nigel Rackham and Dan Yoram Schwarzmann of PwC have been appointed as joint administrators of BSL and joint special administrators of BACSL, after the regulator assessed that both stockbroking firms are insolvent

Closing the gender pay gap in the UK could boost women’s wages by £90bn per annum, increasing incomes on average by £6,300 per woman per year, according to research from PwC 

In the wake of Carillion’s collapse, the public accounts committee (PAC) has published a blistering report on the government’s handling of £500m of contracts with Learndirect, the contractor delivering apprenticeship training, on the grounds that poor management has allowed the outsourcer to becoming ‘too big to fail’ despite inadequate performance