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20Oct07

TAXES REACH 20-YEAR HIGH

Britain has become one of the most taxed countries in the world, with people handing over a greater share of their wealth to the Government than at any stage in the past twenty years.

The scale of Britain's tax burden was published in a 19 October report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), one of the world's most respected economic groups. It makes clear that despite Gordon Brown's repeated promise to introduce a "fair tax system", the Government has increasingly hit families and companies with ever-higher taxes, from stamp duty and inheritance tax to council tax and business rates.

The OECD ranked the tax take of the world's 30 richest nations, and for the first time since 1986 Britain is among the 10 most taxed countries, above the US, Australia, Germany, Italy and Spain. The Treasury now takes 37.4 per cent of the gross domestic product as tax - the highest since 1986, and considerably higher than when Mr Brown took over the Treasury in 1997. There have only been three periods in the past 42 years when the tax burden has been higher.

Mark Versallion, prospective Conservative MP said "families were being hit hardest, with most personal taxes doubling and people are rightly asking where has all the money gone? If it had all gone into hospitals, schools or roads and we could see they had improved, I don't think people would mind so much."

More than a third of a million people will have had to pay the middle rate - three per cent - of stamp duty this year, adding at least £7,500 to the cost of buying their homes. Council taxes have doubled since 1997, with the average household paying more than £1,321 this year. And inheritance tax, even after the reforms announced last week, will net the Treasury an estimated £3.3 billion in 2009 - more than it took last year. The Treasury's own predictions showed it will continue to rise.

Mark Versallion added, "The UK is set to have the highest tax burden in its peacetime history. Gordon Brown's appetite for cash is insatiable and hard-working families are paying the price." The high tax burden is damaging the economy. "A decade ago, at the end of John Major's Conservative Government, Britain had among the lowest taxes in the OECD, now we have some of the highest. Faced with the growing challenge of China and India, this is going completely in the wrong direction."