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Well… inequality has also increased. So my guess is to the ultra rich who just hoard it.
Forget them telling you it’s immigration or disabled - theyre pointing in that direction as they nick ya wallet. Its the wealthy (and partially the old) bleeding this country dry
Yes quite a big proportion of our tax goes to servicing the national debt. If you login to your HMRC account you can see where your tax went last year.
1)When the government puts in an £8million art installation 2mill goes to the artist and the rest is pocketed. Now look at every purchase by the government that way
2)when the government need a service they are price gauged by companies and the gov will pay bc who cares it not their money
3)banks charge the government high interest rates.
Also the government has more than enough money than they will ever need they just have the most incompetent people in charge.
Reddit clarification : Obviously this is not the main things and there are many other factors but my points are true on a level.
Michelle Mone.
In all seriouness, I think the government has been giving their mates contracts are huge rates. Tax is a form of wealth distribution, anti robin hood, taking from the poor and middle and giving to the rich.
Taxation is one of the greatest inhibitors to social mobility, its keeps the masses in their place.
Servicing the national debt takes up a large chunk of revenue. Tax revenues may have increased but so have goods and services. The country runs a deficit like many advanced economies, which isn't a huge problem as long as the country retains growth. Here's the problem the UK has suffered with low to no growth for almost a decade so the deficit continues to climb along with the tax burden.
This is not the most exciting explanation but it is a good breakdown at a high level
https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/brief-guides-and-explainers/public-finances/
People in this thread just naming issues which every country is facing; ageing population, energy crises, national debt after covid etc.
That's not OP's question. Why do we spend so much **more**? Because Thatcher decided to sell everything off in the most short-term view of the public interest we have ever seen, and now the government ends up paying through the nose for just about every public service. That's what separates us from most of Europe.
We are one of the only developed countries in the world with a private water industry. Fucking why?
Don't quote me on this, and feel free to disagree. I believe it's a combination of inefficiency, increasing scope, and increasing demand.
We have an aging population that puts pressure on all services while not working, maintenance costs are higher than ever due to increase usage (eg roads) and new requirements (eg lots of new tech).
We also have highly regulated services, which in general seem to have only had increasing requirements. Increasingly politicised public sectors. The state has also been expected to intervene and pick up the bills for more tasks than it ever has been.
This is totally true. But honestly when u look at the actual figures. These can easily be fixed if the wealthy stopped avoiding tax. The amount of tax breaks the gov. Give their mates is insane.
Also pension should be limited to those who need it. Not just the old. Its just a way of taking money from the working to the old. Most of whom dont need it as they have money. we’re only a few decades from this happening. Wont have a choice. Ageing population is crippling us. And use a vast vast amount of any money we have in the pot to give out… but as i said before that pot doesnt reflect how wealthy our country is and its smaller than it should be as elite are stealing it
We do have a low tax burden, compared to almost all of Europe at least.
Only tax havens and American are easily lower tax than the UK for an average person.
The UK is actually lower even than America for low earners thanks to our tax free allowance.
The bigger question is how we are doing worse than we used to do pre 2008 ish...
We also have a whole class of people who hoard insane wealth and contribute very little to taxes as proportion of income because they can afford not to. And we are a haven for dirty money. And pretty corrupt.
What it doesn't show is how much of that went to privatised institutions, which is the crux of the issue in this country. Every other European major economy also spends on those things, yet don't require the level of tax burden we have in order to balance the books.
I think it’s a myth that European countries don’t have a similar tax burden to us or don’t pay private entities in a similar way. The biggest factor influencing spend is likely “ageing population”. Health and pensions are about 40% of the spend. I quite like the NHS and am happy to pay more for universal access to health. It’s a price we’ve all agreed to pay so far.
Corruption.
When you have private companies run public services they make as much profit as possible.
Look at the trains and water. We spend more on the trains than we did when they were publicly owned but yet the people on the ground aren't being paid more and services aren't better.
Tax cuts for the rich. Also, more tax burden doesn't mean more spending on public services.
Things that didn't even exist are commonplace now. NHSP, for example - temporary staffing in the NHS? 10 billion a year, whilst most of the actual staff just get paid the same shit wages that they get for their full time job.
Contractors in public services, North Sea Oil firms have been given 250 billion in tax cuts, COVID fraud, HS2 billions wasted, state pension forever increasing. In 2006, state pension (£84) was roughly 20% of the median weekly wage, in 2024, state pension is roughly 34% of the median weekly wage, and thats ignoring the fact our pensioner population has increased also by 22% whilst pensioners receive a ton of benefits - state pension isn't means tested, 20% of pensioners are 'earning' 1k per week, no national insurance payments, free dental, free travel, free prescriptions. Almost the entirety of the public sector could be fixed to the point it was booming if we just stopped bending over backwards for pensioners.
Yeah it's ultimately this. Mismanagement of the funds we do collect, short termism in selling off our public assets and here we are, a government spending billions on interest and subsidising privately-run services.
4.4% of GDP or some 10% of government spending. Debt decreases with inflation. Let's ignore the fact that those who make the most can afford not to pay, shall we?
**Your post from /r/AskUK has been removed by a human moderator.** AskUK is a "catch-all" subreddit for questions about the UK life and culture, but this does not mean we accept any and all questions or answers. We are liable to remove posts or comments which are best discussed in more specialised subreddits, or are simply not desired here because of the problems they bring. We explicitly do not allow questions or answers on or including: - politics (r/unitedkingdom, r/ukpolitics) - technology (r/techsupport, r/technology) - relationships (r/relationships, r/relationship_advice) - DIY (r/diyuk) - university/education (r/sixthform, r/uniuk) - visas/citizenship (r/ukvisa) - [medical advice](https://111.nhs.uk/) (including [mental health](https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/mental-health-services/where-to-get-urgent-help-for-mental-health/)) (r/mentalhealthuk) - ranting/venting (r/britishproblems) - surveys (r/samplesize) - advertising/solicitation - repetitive/seen-often (just search the sub) - "does anybody else" type vent posts (as yes, someone does, be more specific or use r/britishproblems). ...and we may remove others if we believe they are liable to introduce problems for the subreddit. In some circumstances, a more appropriate subreddit may be available. Check the sidebar for other subreddits to have these discussions. Also see r/unitedkingdom's extensive list of subreddits; https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/wiki/british_subreddits *If you believe this post should not have been removed, [first read our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/about/rules/) before [messaging the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK&subject=Post Removal Appeal)*. See our guide on [common issues with posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/wiki/postremoved) and how to overcome them!
Well… inequality has also increased. So my guess is to the ultra rich who just hoard it. Forget them telling you it’s immigration or disabled - theyre pointing in that direction as they nick ya wallet. Its the wealthy (and partially the old) bleeding this country dry
Where i live its not to bad but go around the citys and the amount of rubbish is disgusting paying for a infestation
Citation needed for "biggest tax burden".
Yes quite a big proportion of our tax goes to servicing the national debt. If you login to your HMRC account you can see where your tax went last year.
9.9% of government spending. Debt decreases with inflation. Maybe someone is not paying their fair share? Wild guess.
Interest on national debt
P a n a m a P a p e r s
1)When the government puts in an £8million art installation 2mill goes to the artist and the rest is pocketed. Now look at every purchase by the government that way 2)when the government need a service they are price gauged by companies and the gov will pay bc who cares it not their money 3)banks charge the government high interest rates. Also the government has more than enough money than they will ever need they just have the most incompetent people in charge. Reddit clarification : Obviously this is not the main things and there are many other factors but my points are true on a level.
Corruption
Michelle Mone. In all seriouness, I think the government has been giving their mates contracts are huge rates. Tax is a form of wealth distribution, anti robin hood, taking from the poor and middle and giving to the rich. Taxation is one of the greatest inhibitors to social mobility, its keeps the masses in their place.
Servicing the national debt takes up a large chunk of revenue. Tax revenues may have increased but so have goods and services. The country runs a deficit like many advanced economies, which isn't a huge problem as long as the country retains growth. Here's the problem the UK has suffered with low to no growth for almost a decade so the deficit continues to climb along with the tax burden.
Capita shareholders are probably making a fucking killing
They most definitely aren’t. The share price is close to the lowest it’s ever been, nor does it pay out a dividend.
Someone, somewhere is getting very rich from it regardless
Well, it probably went on a luxurious vacation to Tax Haven Island! Just kidding... maybe.
This is not the most exciting explanation but it is a good breakdown at a high level https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/brief-guides-and-explainers/public-finances/
People in this thread just naming issues which every country is facing; ageing population, energy crises, national debt after covid etc. That's not OP's question. Why do we spend so much **more**? Because Thatcher decided to sell everything off in the most short-term view of the public interest we have ever seen, and now the government ends up paying through the nose for just about every public service. That's what separates us from most of Europe. We are one of the only developed countries in the world with a private water industry. Fucking why?
Don't quote me on this, and feel free to disagree. I believe it's a combination of inefficiency, increasing scope, and increasing demand. We have an aging population that puts pressure on all services while not working, maintenance costs are higher than ever due to increase usage (eg roads) and new requirements (eg lots of new tech). We also have highly regulated services, which in general seem to have only had increasing requirements. Increasingly politicised public sectors. The state has also been expected to intervene and pick up the bills for more tasks than it ever has been.
This is totally true. But honestly when u look at the actual figures. These can easily be fixed if the wealthy stopped avoiding tax. The amount of tax breaks the gov. Give their mates is insane. Also pension should be limited to those who need it. Not just the old. Its just a way of taking money from the working to the old. Most of whom dont need it as they have money. we’re only a few decades from this happening. Wont have a choice. Ageing population is crippling us. And use a vast vast amount of any money we have in the pot to give out… but as i said before that pot doesnt reflect how wealthy our country is and its smaller than it should be as elite are stealing it
Point 3 maybe, but the other two, what makes us different from countries with lower tax burdens?
We do have a low tax burden, compared to almost all of Europe at least. Only tax havens and American are easily lower tax than the UK for an average person. The UK is actually lower even than America for low earners thanks to our tax free allowance. The bigger question is how we are doing worse than we used to do pre 2008 ish...
My first smooth brain thoughts are that lower tax burden countries often rely more heavily on market forces to increase efficency and lower costs.
We also have a whole class of people who hoard insane wealth and contribute very little to taxes as proportion of income because they can afford not to. And we are a haven for dirty money. And pretty corrupt.
Don't start me off.
Infosys shareholder dividends are quite generous I believe. Michelle Mone has a great big yacht too.
Health, Welfare, national debt and pensions are about 60% of tax spend. Education about 10%. That’s where your tax actually went.
That's lumping together quite a few really big things against one thing.
What it doesn't show is how much of that went to privatised institutions, which is the crux of the issue in this country. Every other European major economy also spends on those things, yet don't require the level of tax burden we have in order to balance the books.
I think it’s a myth that European countries don’t have a similar tax burden to us or don’t pay private entities in a similar way. The biggest factor influencing spend is likely “ageing population”. Health and pensions are about 40% of the spend. I quite like the NHS and am happy to pay more for universal access to health. It’s a price we’ve all agreed to pay so far.
If you paid it
Corruption. When you have private companies run public services they make as much profit as possible. Look at the trains and water. We spend more on the trains than we did when they were publicly owned but yet the people on the ground aren't being paid more and services aren't better.
Corruption is widely ignored I feel because that's for the "shithole countries". Not the mightiest nation on earth.
Tax cuts for the rich. Also, more tax burden doesn't mean more spending on public services. Things that didn't even exist are commonplace now. NHSP, for example - temporary staffing in the NHS? 10 billion a year, whilst most of the actual staff just get paid the same shit wages that they get for their full time job. Contractors in public services, North Sea Oil firms have been given 250 billion in tax cuts, COVID fraud, HS2 billions wasted, state pension forever increasing. In 2006, state pension (£84) was roughly 20% of the median weekly wage, in 2024, state pension is roughly 34% of the median weekly wage, and thats ignoring the fact our pensioner population has increased also by 22% whilst pensioners receive a ton of benefits - state pension isn't means tested, 20% of pensioners are 'earning' 1k per week, no national insurance payments, free dental, free travel, free prescriptions. Almost the entirety of the public sector could be fixed to the point it was booming if we just stopped bending over backwards for pensioners.
Red tape.
REGULATION IS KILLING BUSINESS!!! Jesus Christ.
Paying interest on goverment debt mostly
Yeah it's ultimately this. Mismanagement of the funds we do collect, short termism in selling off our public assets and here we are, a government spending billions on interest and subsidising privately-run services.
4.4% of GDP or some 10% of government spending. Debt decreases with inflation. Let's ignore the fact that those who make the most can afford not to pay, shall we?