UK households will pay more than £2,000 more in tax

How much more will UK households pay in tax after the election? Keir Starmer was right to say Rishi Sunak’s claim that it would be £2,000 was “garbage”. The real number is bigger. Over four years it'll be about £3,200 per household, or an extra £800 a year, thanks to fiscal drag as a result of Conservative decisions to leave tax thresholds unchanged as wages rise. The numbers have been crunched by the Resolution Foundation, which can’t claim to be entirely disinterested. Its managing director, Torsten Bell, is now the Labour parliamentary candidate for Swansea West. That said, the £3,200 number doesn’t work as Labour attack on Tory tax policy either, since barring a surprise when Labour publishes its manifesto later this week there’s no sign it will raise those tax thresholds if it forms the next government. Taxes are high, and one way or another they are going up.