SANDFORD, Cedric Thomas 1924-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born November 21, 1924, in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England; died of cancer, March 5, 2004, in Bath, Somerset, England. Economist, educator, and author. Sandford was an economics professor who specialized in public finance and, especially, in the study of taxation laws and practices. After training as a fighter pilot with the Royal Air Force during World War II, he returned to England before seeing any action and attended Manchester University. He earned a B.A. in economics in 1948, followed by an M.A. the next year; he later also completed a B.A. in history from the University of London in 1955. Joining the Burnley Municipal College faculty in 1949, he taught there through the 1950s, moving on to the Bristol College of Science and Technology in 1959, where he was head of the department of social studies from 1960 to 1965. While at Bristol, he helped with the founding of Bath University, where he was professor of political economy from 1965 to 1987 and head of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences intermittently during the 1960s and 1970s. At Bath University, Sandford was the founding director of the Centre for Fiscal Studies, which later led to his establishing Fiscal Publications with his second wife. As a tax expert, Sandford was concerned with tax-compliance laws, discovering through his research that the time and money it took for British citizens to comply with filing their taxes was more onerous than even the government's investment, and that laws were especially unfair to the lower classes in this regard. He wrote on this and other tax-related subjects in a number of books, including Economics of Public Finance (1969; third edition, 1984), Hidden Costs of Taxation (1973), The Economic Structure (1982), Successful Tax Reform: Lessons from an Analysis of Tax Reform in Six Countries (1993), and Why Tax Systems Differ (2000). Sandford retired as a professor emeritus in 1987, but continued to write, conduct research, and advise organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Financial Times March 19, 2004, p. 7.

Guardian (Manchester, England), April 16, 2004, p. 27.

Independent (London, England), March 18, 2004, p. 32.

Times (London, England), March 23, 2004, p. 30.