In October 1972 the Government published a discussion document, the Green Paper Proposals for a Tax-Credit System, which sought ‘a way to simplify and reform the whole system of personal tax collection and, at the same time, to improve the system of income support for poor people’. In this article we discuss some of the implications of the proposals for the distribution of income support, the effects on personal incomes, both in cash and kind, the cost of the proposals and how this might be met, and some aspects of the resulting tax and social security system.