{"id":27865,"date":"2015-02-13T07:47:30","date_gmt":"2015-02-13T07:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=27865"},"modified":"2015-02-13T07:47:30","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T07:47:30","slug":"are-we-paying-more-tax-than-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2015\/02\/13\/are-we-paying-more-tax-than-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Are we paying more tax than ever?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alex Cobham of the\u00a0Tax Justice Network noted an odd claim by the government on Wednesday<\/a>. They said in an amendment to a Labour motion tabled in parliament that<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cthe UK is collecting more tax than ever before.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Alex set out to check and as he said (and I quote with permission):<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019ve been quickly through the Office of Budget Responsibility and Office of National Statistics data (and had some fantastic support from the latter, for which many thanks \u2014 no blame attaches, of course), and I can\u2019t stand this up. Here\u2019s a graph, of total (central government) tax receipts, with and without National Insurance Contributions (which OBR do include in tax). This leaves out local government tax \u2014 business rates and council tax.<\/p>\n

\"UK<\/a><\/p>\n

Neither in the most recent period, nor across the coalition government\u2019s term to date, can I see any pattern that could support the statement. In each case, tax receipts are lower in the last one year and the last four years are lower than most of the preceding thirteen. (To be clear, this isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing \u2014 a hard recession may not be a bad time to lower tax pressure. I\u2019m just looking at the government claim here.)<\/p>\n

Surely such a basic error wouldn\u2019t be made in a parliamentary amendment, so there must be some other explanation. The only thing I can think of is that the government are referring to tax receipts in current, cash terms \u2014 but that would make no sense at all for a comparison over time, in fact it would be seriously misleading. So maybe there\u2019s something I\u2019m missing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

No Alex, you're not missing anything. They're just being seriously misleading. They are referring to cash. And that is a wholly inappropriate claim. And we are not paying more tax then ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alex Cobham of the\u00a0Tax Justice Network noted an odd claim by the government on Wednesday. They said in an amendment to a Labour motion tabled
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