The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), an independent economics research institute, responded on 6 August 2026 to government plans to assign between 6% and 9% of local income-tax revenue to England's mayors from April 2028 1. The arrangement would replace the integrated settlements currently running in the North and the Midlands, under which central government hands a mayoral authority a single consolidated grant.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies sets one gain against one risk in the same response. Assignment gives an authority a longer view of its funding than annual grant settlements allow, which makes multi-year commitments possible. It also exposes that authority to swings in receipts driven by employment, wages and national tax policy, none of which a mayor sets 2. Assignment is not devolution of the tax itself: rates and thresholds would stay in Westminster, while the yield would land locally.
For this desk the arrangement matters as a channel rather than as a policy. Local government distress has come through grant shortfalls and emergency support so far, with 36 councils granted £1.74bn of Exceptional Financial Support for 2026-27 . Assigned income tax adds a second channel that moves with the economic cycle, and it arrives on a date nearly two years out, which is long enough that the size of the sums involved will be set by circumstances nobody can currently observe.
