Taxpayers are being fleeced!

Isn’t it lovely to know that the government’s tax take has massively increased in the last tax year? Aren’t you pleased?

After all, it was so sensible of them to spend BILLIONS in 2020-22 because of lockdowns which achieved…nothing good and did a lot of harm.

It’s so helpful to know that we the taxpayers are helping to pay the crippling debt burden created by those useless and harmful lockdowns.

Just to give you a few figures from HMRC’s latest announcement of tax receipts:

• Receipts from PAYE income Tax and NICs (National Insurance) for April 2022-March 2023 are £378.2 bn. That’s an extra £40.2 bn more than the same period up to March 2022.
• Stamp duty tax receipts for April 2022-March 2023 are £19.2 bn. That’s £0.7 bn more than the same period to March 2022.
• Inheritance tax (IHT) brought in £7.1 bn which is £1 bn higher than last year
• Air passenger duty receipts for April 2022-March 2023 are £3.2 bn, which is £2.2 bn higher than the previous year.

Is this all happening because we’re so much richer?

Do you feel richer?

No.

It’s because tax thresholds – the point at which we have to start paying tax – have been frozen so that as income rates gradually increase (though not to the extent that they match inflation) it means that more of our money and investments are caught in the tax trap.

It’s those ‘stealth taxes’ we’ve kept hearing about where the tax rate isn’t increased but the point at which we need to start paying taxes is effectively lowered simply by being frozen. So, at first it looks like the government haven’t put tax rates up, but in effect they have.

Where is our tax money going?

All this lovely lolly is going into the government’s coffers to help pay back the insane amounts of money they just gave away during lockdown, both to the public in the form of furlough and to their mates in the form of PPE contracts and the rest.

And at the same time, the Chief Economist at the Bank of England tells us that we should just accept that we are poor.

Right now, according to research by credit management company Lowell, one in five Brits is worried that they won’t be able to feed their family in the summer holidays.

That’s where we’re at while the tax burden increases.

Is this what you voted for? I certainly didn’t!

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