For immediate release
As the new Chancellor puts the finishing touches to his first Budget, the TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA) has released a new tool to help those wanting to lower taxes.
The TPA tool allows politicians, commentators, journalists and over-burdened taxpayers the chance to play Chancellor with the click of a button, and select which taxes they will cut to bring the UK tax burden down to the levels of previous Budgets.
Former Chancellor, Sajid Javid, cited TPA research in his resignation speech by explaining that “our tax burden is the highest it has been in 50 years.” The TPA's research on the size of the tax burden under post-war prime ministers shows that under successive governments, the tax burden as a proportion of GDP has crept up with increases in business taxes and fiscal drag bringing millions more into higher tax bands.
This easy-to-use ‘Play the Chancellor’ web tool lets users analyse the burden themselves, outlining how high it was in each year since 1955 and showing how much it could be reduced by scrapping business rates, insurance premium tax, the TV licence fee or cutting the basic rate of income tax.
How the tool works
- You can select any year since 1955 to see how large the tax burden was compared to today, and how much you could reduce taxes by in order to get the burden back to that level.
- Once you have that number, you can opt to either abolish or reduce tax rates in order to lower the tax burden to your chosen year, or, alternately, an entirely new number.
- For example, abolishing inheritance tax would knock £5.4 billion off the tax burden, whereas the sugar tax would reduce it by £0.3 billion. A 1 per cent cut to the basic rate of income tax would be worth £4.5 billion, whereas the same cut to the 45 per cent rate would only be £0.1 billion.
- This tool will allow everyone to work out exactly which tax cuts they want and what their impact would be on the overall tax burden.
- The web tool generates a shareable link, showing your social media followers how much you have cut from the UK’s record tax burden. For example, all of the changes in bullet 3 combined would look like this.
Duncan Simpson, research director at the TaxPayers' Alliance said:
"This Budget must not see taxpayers bounced into boosting the bumper tax burden, already the highest in fifty years.
“Our new game will put taxpayers on the front foot by letting them play the Chancellor, with the simple tool calculating the taxes which can be slashed if we take the tax burden back to more reasonable levels.
"We hope that sorting the sums and shining a light on the scope for tax cuts gives politicians and journalists all the ammo they need to fight for pro-growth policies in this Budget and beyond.”
TPA spokesmen are available for live and pre-recorded broadcast interviews via 07795 084 113 (no texts)
Media contact:
Sam Packer
Media Campaign Manager, TaxPayers' Alliance
[email protected]
24-hour media hotline: 07795 084 113 (no texts)
- Founded in 2004 by Matthew Elliott and Andrew Allum, the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) fights to reform taxes, reduce spending and protect taxpayers. Find out more about the TaxPayers' Alliance at www.taxpayersalliance.com.
- TaxPayers' Alliance's advisory council.
- Ahead of the budget, the TaxPayers' Alliance has published One big hit: fixing national insurance for good, calling for the Chancellor to raise the national insurance threshold to the level of the income tax threshold in a single financial year.