A new website aims to explain the complex UK tax system, and is revealing the huge inequalities embedded within it
Tax is the social contract that binds citizens together. Tax is not a “burden”, but the price we pay for civilisation. Vaccines are just the latest reminder of the good that taxes do. But what if most people – even those who think themselves well-informed – know little of the tax they pay, where it goes or how fairly it falls? Democracy depends on citizens understanding what they vote for; ignorance breeds dangerous misconceptions.
TaxLab, an information service unveiled by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, is a wonder of elegant clarity, its impartial explainers revealing what everyone should know: and it’s guaranteed to surprise most people. Two years in construction, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Friends Provident Foundation funded it to create a better-informed electorate. A mouse-click shows that people in Britain pay less tax (in 2019 figures), at 33% of GDP, than the EU average of 39%, while in Denmark it’s 46%. Put in your pay and TaxLab shows exactly where you stand in the income pecking order: people wildly miscalculate, both rich and poor, placing themselves too near the middle. Young people are generous to older people, but if they understood the tax biases benefiting retired people they might be more likely to vote.
