Yahoo Finance Workers face highest tax bills in a generation under Boris Johnson’s social care plans
The tax burden will jump to a 70-year high if National Insurance contributions are ramped up to fund social care, taking it to levels not seen since Clement Attlee, the Labour prime minister’s, administration.
According to calculations by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, a one percentage point increase in NI contributions would mean the Government’s tax take, as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), rising to 35.4 per cent by the 2024-25 financial year.
A two percentage increase would mean a new 70-year high arriving a year sooner, hitting 35.4 per cent in the 2023-24 financial year. In the last financial year, the level was 34 per cent.
According to the Alliance’s projections, if the feared NI increases are imposed then Boris Johnson’s administration will have placed the greatest tax load on Britain since Mr Attlee’s regime.
At the end of his premiership in 1951, the tax burden was 36.1 per cent, according to the lobby group, a level which has not been exceeded in the intervening years.
To calculate the tax burden, the Alliance divided the total tax receipts by GDP to give a percentage of the level of tax extracted by the Government.
Duncan Simpson, the research director at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: “Boris’s’ broken promises would leave working people facing the highest tax bills in a generation.
“Rather than look for a sustainable solution to social care through automation and finding savings, the PM's plan would opt to hammer jobs and wages, with higher taxes than we've seen since the years after the war.”
