The Conservative Party says it will “cut tax” as part of a plan for a stronger economy, and blames Labour for ensuring that, to quote Kemi Badenoch, “more and more people are dragged into higher rates through a stealth tax bombshell”. However, as the latest tax statistics released by HMRC reveal today, that bombshell had already landed in 2024, when the Tories were still in power.
The Personal Incomes Statistics are an annual survey conducted by HMRC that show the real impact of tax policies, after they’ve been enacted. When a Budget is announced we get the forecast; the HMRC figures describe the real, observed effect of tax changes. The data released today covers the year ending in April 2024 – the Tories’ last year in power – and it shows millions of people being pushed into paying more tax by a Conservative government.
In that last desperate year of the People’s Socialist Republic of Jeremy Hunt, the total number of people paying tax increased by 2.17 million. Most of these people were basic-rate taxpayers, pulled into paying tax for the first time by the freezing of tax thresholds, but by far the biggest proportional increase was in the number of additional-rate taxpayers (people earning over £125,140 a year), which rose 56.8 per cent in a single year, introducing 324,000 well-paid people to the 45 per cent tax rate.
It is these higher earners whom Hunt forced to pay the largest share, with fewer than a million people contributing 37.7 per cent of all income tax in 2023-24. The nest-eggs of the well-off were also raided by Jeremy Corbyn – sorry, Jeremy Hunt – as the taxes raised from property, banks and building societies increased by 17.2 per cent, to £125bn.
Many of these tax rises were imposed prior to Jeremy “Robin Hood” Hunt becoming Chancellor, of course; the tapering of the personal allowance, which creates a 60 per cent marginal rate between £100,000 and £125,000, was introduced by Alastair Darling at the end of New Labour’s time in power. The income tax thresholds were frozen in 2021 by Rishi Sunak. But it was Hunt who, having imposed historic tax increases on British workers through these same means, had the brass cojones to stand in front of a podium that said “Labour’s Tax Rises”.
Of course, it was true that Labour was going to have to raise taxes, just as it was necessary for Jeremy “Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov” Hunt to do so. He might not have wanted to increase taxes, he might believe in a smaller state, but this is not what circumstances allowed. It is highly unlikely that Kemi Badenoch – in the seemingly rather unlikely event that it becomes her decision – would be capable of anything but a similar hypocrisy.
[Further reading: When a foreign billionaire sacks British workers, the taxpayer gets the bill]
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