Do the parties’ sums add up? How the IFS became the ultimate arbiter

During the election campaign, the Institute for Fiscal Studies' genuine impartiality has become a major asset in scrutinising claims and counterclaims

Amid the partisan clamour of the election campaign, Paul Johnson, the owlish director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and his team of young policy wonks have come to be seen as the ultimate arbiters of that endlessly repeated question, "Do the parties' sums add up?"

Ever since it was founded in 1969, it has been part of the thinktank's raison d'etre to raise the quality of national debate about tax and spending policy. Publicly funded, through the Economic and Social Research Council, its number-crunchers, many of whom join as young researchers straight from university, answer to no one.

Related: Election 2015: taxpayers worse off under every party, experts say

Related: IFS: no magic money tree for politicians to shake