Labour's 'crushing' tax hikes worth £85BILLION a year - after Healey's Budget added another £7.5bn to burden

Published: 07:57 EST, 13 November 2026 | Updated: 07:59 EST, 13 November 2026 Labour was accused of 'crushing' Britons today after estimates from the Treasury watchdog laid bare the scale of tax hikes.Together, Rachel Reeves and John Healey have now announced increases projected to increase the burden by nearly £85billion by 2031-32.The figures feature in a database of tax measures maintained by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, and now updated to cover the latest fiscal package.They show the blizzard of changes in the latest Budget were scored as adding a net £7.52billion a year to taxes by the end of the period.Revenue-raisers included putting up levies on income from savings and property - although not the temporary extra charge on banks, which is due to have lapsed by 2031-32. But the latest hit pales next to the £77billion of net increases that were announced when Ms Reeves was Chancellor. The blizzard of changes announced by John Healey (pictured) in the latest Budget were scored as adding £7.52billion a year to taxes by the end of the period Those included the brutal national insurance raid on employers, as well as extending the hated freeze on tax thresholds for another three years. Ms Reeves has been defiant about her record, insisting she had to rebuild the public finances and successfully 'fixed the foundations' of the economy. The OBR maintains figures for all the tax policies 'scored' at fiscal events since 1970, adjusted in line with nominal GDP growth in the years to the end of the forecast horizon. The numbers do not account for measures raising more or less than anticipated - and miss out some smaller changes up to the watchdog's creation in 2010.However, they give the best indication available of the size of packages announced by Chancellors.In its forecasts accompanying the Budget, the OBR laid out that the tax burden is heading for a record high. As a proportion of GDP the tax take will reach an unheralded 38.6 per cent by 2031-32. Ms Reeves' Autumn 2024 package was initially estimated as the biggest tax raiser ever. However, it has now been classed as marginally smaller than Norman Lamont's Spring 1993 raid following the Black Wednesday sterling crisis. That appears to be down to GDP revisions of the last few years affecting the historical measures more than the recent ones. Ms Reeves has been defiant about her record, insisting she had to rebuild the public finances and successfully 'fixed the foundations' of the economyLord Lamont's Budget is now scored at £45.66billion, while the 2024 Reeves event is put at £44.57billion.Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith said: 'Labour promised not to raise taxes on working people, yet the OBR's own figures show they have added a crushing £85billion of new taxes.'The reason bills are going up is the cost of all those tax rises and they are hitting ordinary families the hardest.'