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Taxed to death

Peter McGahan, chief executive of Cornwall-based Worldwide Financial Planning said that we are facing the highest tax burden on our economy since the 1950s

Peter McGahan, chief executive of Worldwide Financial Planning(Image: © Richard Trainor)

I’ve always thought it strange that after all the extraordinary technological advances in the world, our tax rate still increases, as does inflation and so interest rates. Surely with such speed of advances, we wouldn’t need as much, and services would be cheaper and quicker?

Remember when they first introduced an answer machine for your home phone. What did we do before then? All meetings were face to face and lengthy, as you didn’t have emails to cover matters before, instead, wading through countless faxes. A letter would take days of delivered at all.

You had to travel to every meeting costing time and fuel, and yet, inflation is soaring and taxes rising. Help me make that make sense.

Forget the direct taxation, also consider the indirect taxation: Remember when you didn’t have to pay for education, for university fees, when you didn’t have to pay for parking in a town, or when you didn’t have to pay for parking to visit your dying parent in a hospital.

Just where is the money going?

No surprise then that we now have the highest tax burden relative to our economy since the 1950s. The previous high was back when I was a mere one year old in 1969. It was 35.1% of GDP (the economy).

When George Osborne was chancellor in 2010, the tax bill was 32.8% of GDP. It is now 36.8% expecting to rise to 37.7%. In 1953, the actual tax bill per head was £2,000. Today its £13,000.

You can sit over your cornflakes and decide where all that money is going and where the current value is being added from it. I’m a little bewildered, but as the chief executive of this company, if I stepped into that public sector role as a chief executive of the country, I’d have my accountants in for a long chat.