In some truly shocking figures recently released reveal that the average household will pay over £1.1m in tax in their lifetime, meaning they would have to work for 18 years just to pay off their tax bills.
Even before the planned rise in NIC and council tax in April, the average family would pay almost £180,000 and £80,000 respectively in their lifetime. This is alongside nearly £480,000 in income tax and £190,000 in VAT, finds the analysis.
John O’Connell, chief executive of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: ‘With the tax burden at a 70-year high, typical families are now tax millionaires.
‘Taxpayers already toiling half their working lives just to pay off the taxman.”
The bottom 20% of households, or families with a household income of £19,171, will work for almost 24 years to pay off their lifetime tax bill, the longest of any group. The lifetime tax bill for the top 20% of households, or families with an income of £137,669, would be £2,573,815 in direct and indirect taxes, which would take them 19 years to pay off.
The figures show that the lifetime tax bill has almost doubled since 1977.
The research also shows it would take more than 33,500 average households’ total lifetime taxes to pay for the £37bn Test and Trace budget. Taxes taken throughout the working lives of almost 14,000 households would cover just a single year of the 0.7% foreign aid budget.
With the tax burden reaching the highest level in 70 years, the TaxPayers’ Alliance is calling for spending to be brought back under control as the country emerges from the pandemic, to protect hard-pressed households by scrapping the planned tax rises and cutting families’ lifetime tax bills.