Kiran Fothergill is Deputy Chairman of the Richmond and Northallerton Association and the former Conservative parliamentary candidate for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East. He is also the Chairman of The Jobs Foundation North East Business Council.
Every week, we’re told the price of a supermarket shop has risen. Every month, there are more headlines about energy bills and inflation. These are issues that impact working people and pensioners alike, but for many households, the biggest single claim on their income isn’t made by Tesco, British Gas, or their mortgage lender.
Increasingly, it’s made by the Treasury.
In 2026, the UK tax burden stands at around 36 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the highest peacetime level in decades. By 2031, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts that the tax burden will continue to rise, approaching 39 per cent of GDP – the highest level since records began in the aftermath of the Second World War.
Right wing commentators are spending much of their time talking about the increasing burden on wealth creators, and the Exchequer’s increasing reliance on high earners – the top 10 per cent of earners now pay around 58 per cent of all Income Tax, and the rich are responding to this by leaving our country (this year the number of millionaires in Britain has fallen to its lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis).
We definitely need to address this, but equally we cannot ignore the plight of lower earners.
The median full-time UK salary has risen to £39,039. On that salary, a worker is likely to pay over £5,000 in income tax, £2,100 in National Insurance and then, on top of this, if they live in an average Band D property, £2,280 per year in Council Tax.
That’s nearly £10,000 in tax. And that’s before paying 20 per cent in VAT on many purchases, Fuel Duty if they drive, Student Finance, Air Passenger Duty should they travel abroad, alcohol and tobacco duty, the mortgage, the energy bills, public transport, dental care and opticians bills.
On top of those burdens, the average working person suffers the consequences of fiscal drag. The Government continues to freeze Income Tax thresholds, and is planning to continue the freeze them into the 2030s. So, whilst wages rise, relative purchasing power remains stagnant. That means, without Parliament ever voting for raising Income Tax, people end up paying more tax.
The current freeze in Income Tax thresholds is forecast to bring millions more people across the £12,570 threshold, including pensioners, meaning they pay Income Tax for the first time. It will push millions more working people into the 40 per cent higher rate. And it’s generating tens of billions of pounds in additional tax revenue for the Treasury. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has described this as one of the largest stealth tax rises in British history.
A high tax burden is actually a problem. Socialists will pretend it is not, Labour MPs will undoubtedly continue to look at what more they can squeeze from our economy to fund increases in welfare or the foreign aid budget, whether that’s a continued freeze on the Income Tax thresholds, more tax on business, or some sort of wealth tax. But as conservatives, we know that this isn’t sustainable or healthy for the wellbeing of our country.
Every extra pound the Treasury takes is a pound a household can’t save and money a business can’t use to invest. And as a country that desperately needs to increase our productivity (annual productivity growth stands at an average of 0.4 per cent between 2008 and 2023, the second lowest in the G7), higher taxes are the opposite of what we need, because higher taxes remove the incentive to work an extra shift, to take on additional staff, to back a risky business proposal.
Until we address our productivity woes, the purchasing power of the British people will not improve, and a high tax economy won’t unlock increased productivity – it will simply make the lives of the wealthy, working people, and pensioners alike more difficult. Millionaires will leave, working people will find their pay packets stretched thinner every year, and pensioners will pay more on income that’s already been taxed earlier in their lives.
It’s not just higher tax that is taking money out of people’s pockets, but state involvement in general. For example, we know the UK has some of the highest energy bills in the world. This has had a catastrophic effect on manufacturing, and strategic industries like steel production. And, it’s inevitably had an impact on household energy bills.
We know international energy prices are a significant driver of this, but what people often don’t realise is that in 2025 around 11 per cent of the average household electricity bill went towards government policy costs as opposed to the direct costs of generating, transmitting, or supplying electricity.
Whether you describe it as a ‘green levy’ or a tax, the principle is the same. Government has required households to fund climate policy through charges on their electricity bills rather than through transparent taxation.
The Labour Party was elected with an overwhelming majority in 2024 on a manifesto promise to not raise taxes on working people, but that’s exactly what they’ve done. Perhaps not directly, perhaps not by a vote through Parliament, but by stealth, by squeezing the very businesses working people rely on for employment, and by pushing people above tax thresholds that haven’t been adjusted in years.
At the next election, for the good of our nation and to finally alleviate the ‘cost of living crisis’, the Conservative Party should stand on a credible plan to change direction on public spending. We need to inspire a future where we have lower taxes, where we eliminate stealth taxes and make the system altogether more transparent so that we build a smaller, more agile state that encourages its citizens to save money and its businesses to invest. Rather than a state that rinses both for every penny it can.
Kiran Fothergill is Deputy Chairman of the Richmond and Northallerton Association and the former Conservative parliamentary candidate for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East. He is also the Chairman of The Jobs Foundation North East Business Council.
Every week, we’re told the price of a supermarket shop has risen. Every month, there are more headlines about energy bills and inflation. These are issues that impact working people and pensioners alike, but for many households, the biggest single claim on their income isn’t made by Tesco, British Gas, or their mortgage lender.
Increasingly, it’s made by the Treasury.
In 2026, the UK tax burden stands at around 36 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the highest peacetime level in decades. By 2031, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts that the tax burden will continue to rise, approaching 39 per cent of GDP – the highest level since records began in the aftermath of the Second World War.
Right wing commentators are spending much of their time talking about the increasing burden on wealth creators, and the Exchequer’s increasing reliance on high earners – the top 10 per cent of earners now pay around 58 per cent of all Income Tax, and the rich are responding to this by leaving our country (this year the number of millionaires in Britain has fallen to its lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis).
We definitely need to address this, but equally we cannot ignore the plight of lower earners.
The median full-time UK salary has risen to £39,039. On that salary, a worker is likely to pay over £5,000 in income tax, £2,100 in National Insurance and then, on top of this, if they live in an average Band D property, £2,280 per year in Council Tax.
That’s nearly £10,000 in tax. And that’s before paying 20 per cent in VAT on many purchases, Fuel Duty if they drive, Student Finance, Air Passenger Duty should they travel abroad, alcohol and tobacco duty, the mortgage, the energy bills, public transport, dental care and opticians bills.
On top of those burdens, the average working person suffers the consequences of fiscal drag. The Government continues to freeze Income Tax thresholds, and is planning to continue the freeze them into the 2030s. So, whilst wages rise, relative purchasing power remains stagnant. That means, without Parliament ever voting for raising Income Tax, people end up paying more tax.
The current freeze in Income Tax thresholds is forecast to bring millions more people across the £12,570 threshold, including pensioners, meaning they pay Income Tax for the first time. It will push millions more working people into the 40 per cent higher rate. And it’s generating tens of billions of pounds in additional tax revenue for the Treasury. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has described this as one of the largest stealth tax rises in British history.
A high tax burden is actually a problem. Socialists will pretend it is not, Labour MPs will undoubtedly continue to look at what more they can squeeze from our economy to fund increases in welfare or the foreign aid budget, whether that’s a continued freeze on the Income Tax thresholds, more tax on business, or some sort of wealth tax. But as conservatives, we know that this isn’t sustainable or healthy for the wellbeing of our country.
Every extra pound the Treasury takes is a pound a household can’t save and money a business can’t use to invest. And as a country that desperately needs to increase our productivity (annual productivity growth stands at an average of 0.4 per cent between 2008 and 2023, the second lowest in the G7), higher taxes are the opposite of what we need, because higher taxes remove the incentive to work an extra shift, to take on additional staff, to back a risky business proposal.
Until we address our productivity woes, the purchasing power of the British people will not improve, and a high tax economy won’t unlock increased productivity – it will simply make the lives of the wealthy, working people, and pensioners alike more difficult. Millionaires will leave, working people will find their pay packets stretched thinner every year, and pensioners will pay more on income that’s already been taxed earlier in their lives.
It’s not just higher tax that is taking money out of people’s pockets, but state involvement in general. For example, we know the UK has some of the highest energy bills in the world. This has had a catastrophic effect on manufacturing, and strategic industries like steel production. And, it’s inevitably had an impact on household energy bills.
We know international energy prices are a significant driver of this, but what people often don’t realise is that in 2025 around 11 per cent of the average household electricity bill went towards government policy costs as opposed to the direct costs of generating, transmitting, or supplying electricity.
Whether you describe it as a ‘green levy’ or a tax, the principle is the same. Government has required households to fund climate policy through charges on their electricity bills rather than through transparent taxation.
The Labour Party was elected with an overwhelming majority in 2024 on a manifesto promise to not raise taxes on working people, but that’s exactly what they’ve done. Perhaps not directly, perhaps not by a vote through Parliament, but by stealth, by squeezing the very businesses working people rely on for employment, and by pushing people above tax thresholds that haven’t been adjusted in years.
At the next election, for the good of our nation and to finally alleviate the ‘cost of living crisis’, the Conservative Party should stand on a credible plan to change direction on public spending. We need to inspire a future where we have lower taxes, where we eliminate stealth taxes and make the system altogether more transparent so that we build a smaller, more agile state that encourages its citizens to save money and its businesses to invest. Rather than a state that rinses both for every penny it can.