Johnson and Sunak gave away £40bn to businesses and the wealthy in tax cuts

Business and the wealthy pocketed £40bn in tax cuts under Johnson, while working people pay for pandemic recovery.

Analysis by Tax Justice UK has highlighted how nearly £40bn was paid to business and the wealthy in tax cuts under Johnson, over the two and a half years up to his resignation, while taxes increased on working people. 

​A review of tax “winners and losers” across every Budget that took place while Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were in Downing Street finds that the Conservative government had given at least £35.8bn to businesses in tax cuts, and £2.2bn to the wealthy, before they both resigned last month. 

To date working people have contributed billions to the post-pandemic recovery, through freezes to Income Tax bands and the government’s National Insurance increase. Yet the mantra of Conservative candidates is that business should receive another bung of public money through further tax cuts. 

Tax Justice UK Acting Executive Director, Paul Hebden, said: “Tax is about political choices, and our analysis shows that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak gave tens of billions in handouts to business.

“The idea among some of the Conservative leadership candidates that the planned 2023 corporation tax increase should be reversed is perverse given that working people are currently the only ones on the hook for the costs of covid recovery.”


Notes:

Tax Justice UK has calculated all of the policy changes implemented from the Budget in March 2020 until the Prime Minister and Chancellor’s resignation at the end of June 2022. 

Using HMT Policy Costings we have estimated the amount of public funding actually distributed between four economic categories - personal, business, wealth and consumption - within this period through tax cuts, social security or spending. 

For the full figures please see here.  

The Office of National Statistics Wealth and Assets Survey recently found that “The wealthiest 10% of households held 43% of all the wealth in Great Britain in the latest period; in comparison the bottom 50% held only 9%.”