In a bid to become the next prime minister, both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt say they plan to increase the point at which people start paying National Insurance Contributions (NICs). This move would make the UK’s tax system even more different to those in most other developed countries in two ways.
The UK raised 35% of national income in tax in 2018–19. Figure 1 shows that tax as a share of national income has fluctuated between around 30% and 35% of national income since the end of the second world war and been rising since the early 1990s. Tax revenues are now, just, higher as a share of national income than at any point since the late 1960s.
