The average UK family is paying almost £8,000 a year more in tax than in 1997, while flat to falling earnings are making it harder for households to meet these and other rising costs.
The average household now pays around £16,938 in taxes - £7,800 more than when Labour first came to power. The rise, when combined with worrying levels of personal debt and the increasing cost of bills, means households are very vulnerable to the coming recession.
The increases in taxation and the availability of easy credit over so many years is a potentially toxic mixture. Especially now the banks no longer seem to be lending. Until recently, average families were able to absorb tax increases partly through rising salaries and greater levels of personal debt. But since 2005 increases in disposable income after tax and housing costs have stalled or gone into reverse.
Worst of all, the poorest are hardest hit by Gordon Brown's stealth taxes. Figures show that millions of the UK's poorest people will pay more in tax as a result of the scrapping of the 10p rate band. The Government realise that 5.3 million will lose out under the changes - over 5,000 of whom live in Dover & Deal. So they came up with all sorts of clever measures to reduce the impact. Even then, the estimated 5,000 losers were only reduced to 3,000. It's a disgrace that 3,000 of our poorest neighbours have lost out. Especially when real local earnings have been falling.
The poorest in our communities are really hard pressed by the credit crunch and Gordon Brown's recession. Charlie Elphicke believes people just don't have the ability to pay all Labour's taxes. Charlie Elphicke thinks the VAT cut was a silly idea and it would have been better to give the hard working people of Dover & Deal a straight forward cut in basic rate income tax.
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In my humble opinion the most damaging taxes as far as the lower-paid members of our society is concerned have to be fuel tax and vehicle duty. They affect every aspect of our lives: not just travel but food, clothing and all other essential goods that have to be transported from one place to another. They also have a damaging effect upon the UK's transport industry as competition from European hauliers increases due to the much lower prices of fuel on the continent (and the additional factor of the vehicle duty). People in the USA are currently getting very heated about the price of fuel: a litre of unleaded petrol currently costs the equivalent of about 64p, which is not surprising as that is around 30% more than last summer! They also do not pay vehicle excise duty! They cannot believe it when I tell them we are paying more than twice that amount because of the extra fuel taxes, plus the extra burden of the vehicle duty. For people like me, who walk or use public transport, and rarely use the car, the road tax is a significant element of my annual running costs, effectively adding the equivalent of several pence per litre to my already high fuel bill.
- Bill Beer