Without tax income the government has to borrow more from the markets. Ahead of the 2013 budget, here is the historic tax receipts data
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• Public spending since 1963
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UK government tax receipts. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian
Government spending needs us to be paying tax. So, how is it doing?
In 2010 the Mirrlees Review concluded the UK tax system is costly and inequitable, and the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) published it's Tax Reliefs Review. Both of these publications beg the question of how much tax is being managed? How much tax is gathered and what is our national income?
HM Treasury publishes a monthly public finances databank spreadsheet (worth subscribing to the email, by the way) - and we update these as they change.
You can see how the tax receipts projected for 2012-13 are £550.6bn, that is 35.6% of GDP - up since the recession started, but strikingly static for the last few decades. You can also see how they went down in the 1980s - was this recession again or reduced tax rates?
And this shows how the Treasury projects individual taxes to change from this year:
This is how the Treasury defines the data here:
Revenue relating to activities in the current year, comprising mainly direct and indirect taxes, but also including social security contributions, interest, dividends, capital taxes and profits from trading activities. Proceeds from the sale of assets are not included
Can you do anything with this data?
