By: Elliot Keck, head of campaigns It’s currently English wine week. This has got me thinking of a wine bar, in the neighbourhood of Cedofeita, Porto. It’s an unassuming place, perched at a fork in the road, and with tables and chairs spilling out under a simple but elegant... Read more...
By Shimeon Lee, researcher Labour and the Conservatives released their manifestos this week setting out their spending plans while ruling out major tax rises. Both parties are instead choosing to rely on economic growth, and the accompanying growth in tax receipts, to deliver on their spending pledges. While the Office... Read more...
By: William Yarwood, media campaign manager With the election well underway, politicians have come out swinging with bright and shiny new policies in an effort to win your vote. The most recent addition to the policy pile is the Conservatives’ annual cap on immigration, an attempt to show voters... Read more...
By: Joanna Marchong, investigations campaign manager The benefits system plays a part in most people’s lives at some point, whether it's small payments to help with heating homes, money to live on when in between jobs or the state pension. The system is designed to cater to the genuinely needy... Read more...
By: Callum McGoldrick, researcher According to the Office of National Statistics, 430,104 shoplifting offences were committed last year, a rise of 37 per cent from last year and the highest level on record. When asked about shoplifting on LBC News last week, Archie Norman, the chairman for Marks & Spencer,... Read more...
By: Shimeon Lee, researcher Over the past decade growth in public sector spending has been monumental. The average person would find it difficult to understand the sheer scale of public spending when looking at official statistics. Spending by government departments often runs into the tens and even hundreds of billions,... Read more...
By: Benjamin Elks, grassroots development manager Early last year we launched a campaign to ditch the diversity demagogues, to channel the endless fury of taxpayers towards the massive cost being imposed by the EDI industry on the public sector. The tens of thousands of people who signed our petition... Read more...
By: Kristian Niemietz, editorial director and head of political economy at the Institute of Economic Affairs In the 18th and 19th centuries, public spending and taxation in Britain were only a fraction of what they are today. The main drivers of current-day government spending, such as healthcare, education, and... Read more...
By: Jonathan Eida, researcher at the TaxPayers’ Alliance It has been a long time since Britain shook off the label of the sick man of Europe. The strong economic growth that developed over the course of a number of decades spanning the eighties, nineties and noughties helped alter the... Read more...
By: Elliot Keck, head of campaigns So, the Rwanda bill has passed. Two years on from the scheme being announced, we’re finally going to see flights take off. Taxpayers will get to see whether a key plank of the government’s plan to tackle illegal immigration will actually work. The... Read more...
By William Yarwood, Media Campaign Manager With World War 3 supposedly on the horizon, defence spending has become the latest political football which politicians of all colours have been taking their best shot at kicking around. Conservative MPs, including Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, have been insisting that the government needs... Read more...
By: Benjamin Elks, grassroots development manager Rishi Sunak’s generational smoking ban gets its second reading today. The bill seeks to raise the legal age for purchasing tobacco by one year every year from 2027 - meaning no one who turns 15 this year will ever legally buy tobacco in... Read more...
By William Yarwood, Media Campaign Manager We have recently released the 17th edition of our annual Town Hall Rich List. This piece of research reveals the top bureaucrats and council bosses who have been receiving hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayer money over the last financial year.Let’s look at... Read more...
If you thought this year would be a turning point for the public sector, think again. The TaxPayers’ Alliance’s war on waste campaign is having to be as active as ever, identifying wasteful spending left, right, and centre. For our first discovery of the year, the spotlight shone on... Read more...
By: Shimeon Lee, researcher at the TaxPayers' Alliance Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI), made headlines this week over demands for compensation stemming from changes to the state pension age. They argue that many women received inadequate notice of the changes, a claim that has been bolstered by the... Read more...
By: Callum McGoldrick, researcher In the third of a series of blogs looking at 12 things the government shouldn’t be doing, we take a look at some of the funding for foreign nationals. The primary responsibility of a state is to its own citizens, but with rising levels of... Read more...
By: Charles Amos, author of the Musing Individualist Substack In Britain the financing and spending of government is heavily centralised. In 2022 local government raised just 4.84 per cent of total government revenue, a stark contrast to Germany at 33.79 per cent, Switzerland at 41.30 per cent, and... Read more...
By: Elliot Keck, head of campaigns Budget day has rarely delivered good news for taxpayers in recent years. Understandably, many probably view it with trepidation - after all, things can always get worse. This week was a damp squib - things certainly didn’t get worse, but they can hardly... Read more...
By: Callum McGoldrick, researcher at the TaxPayers' Alliance In the second of series of blogs looking at 12 things the government shouldn’t be doing, we take a look at just a few of the subsidies handed out by Whitehall, unnecessarily, expensively and often counterproductively. Indiscriminate subsidies State subsidies... Read more...
By: Jonathan Eida, researcher Taxpayers in the UK have been struggling through a cost-of-living crisis. The tax burden is currently at a 70 year high. Alongside this record tax burden, the public have faced higher levels of inflation and increasing interest rates, impacting mortgage payers. The impact is... Read more...
By: Callum McGoldrick, researcher at the TaxPayers' Alliance The UK has a record high tax burden, harming growth and hitting household budgets. But to sustainably bring down this tax burden, there needs to be a serious conversation about what the state should do, and what it shouldn't. This... Read more...
By: John O'Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance The TPA revealed this week that the number of people paying income tax has soared by 4.5 million. This matters, because tax has a detrimental impact on people's decision-making. Workers might decide to work fewer hours or less hard, perhaps... Read more...
By: Joanna Marchong, investigations campaign manager Ending the year with a bang, the TaxPayers’ Alliance’s war on waste campaign had a few explosive revelations of wasteful spending across the public sector. The woke agenda now permeates every part of the public sector, at huge cost to taxpayers.The NHS... Read more...
by Jonathan Eida, researcher Holding local councils to account requires an understanding of their funding mechanisms. This blog serves to lift the lid on council funding and see what lies beneath. With this comes several significant takeaways. Mismanagement plays a significant role in defining council tax decisions. Croydon Council... Read more...