FAMILIES will have seen their taxes hiked by £4,200 per household in less than a decade, shocking new research shows.
The public coffers will be lined to the tune of £1trillion-a-year by 2026 – with the tax take having soared from 33 per cent of national output in 2009/10 to an eyewatering 38 per cent by 2028.
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Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is today urged to stop tinkering and instead slash stamp duty and simplify the tax code to get that burden down and get Britain moving.
The left-of-centre Resolution Foundation think tank say it is time to “move away from flip-flopping” on tweaks to levies like Corporation Tax and start targeting growth with bold strokes.
They hit out: “Britain needs to move away from its simplistic and pernicious cycle of promising tax cuts while delivering tax rises.”
And in bad news for Tory MPs desperate for cuts, they warn with out radical reforms taxes are only going to creep up further.
Instead the economists say the Chancellor must start making it “cheaper and easier for firms to grow and move premises”.
They suggest a £5billion in relief by cancelling the 2025 rise to stamp duty and halving the hated moving levy for main homes and non residential properties.
And they say this can be paid for by reducing the VAT threshold on businesses from £85,000 to £30,000 that they claim currently puts small firms off from growing.
And they urge the Treasury to push on with plans to simply the tax system to level the playing field for the less well off by “preventing well-advised rich people using its complexity to reduce their bills.”
They also suggest making rental earnings taxed like working income – adding that the overall rate of National Insurance could be reduced by a one per cent without a loss of revenue.
The think tank’s top numbers man Adam Corlett said: “The UK’s taxes have jumped up overall and are more likely to rise further than fall in future, despite the political rhetoric around cuts.
“Britain’s tax system needs a complete overhaul so that it is focused on helping rather than hindering economic growth, reducing inequality and creating a level playing field.
“These are basic principles that most taxpayers would expect, but that our current system frequently fails to deliver.”
