The UK now levies 90 taxes – the most since 1834

Tax Policy Associates counts 90 separate taxes in the UK, the highest number since 1834, against 348 in France and 60 in Germany.

The think tank’s latest analysis sets the three systems side by side and finds that the UK now collects more tax than at any point since the years after the Napoleonic Wars.

France raises €1,321 billion in taxes, equal to 45.3% of GDP, while Germany raises €1,817 billion, equal to 42.2% of GDP. The UK collects roughly 37% of GDP, the lowest share of the three, yet its tax collection keeps rising.

The French Court of Audit identifies 243 low-yield taxes, of which 148 appear in the analysis, and a further 95 raise sums too small to trace to a published figure.

Beneath the major levies sit training charges, chamber taxes, insurance levies, sector charges, nuclear and water levies, gambling duties and local land agency charges, many of them relics of past political compromises.

Together, they create a tax bureaucracy far heavier than anything UK businesses face. The Tax Foundation ranks France last of 38 OECD countries for tax competitiveness, partly on this complexity and partly on the highest corporate rate in the group.

How Germany stays simple

Germany shows that a heavy tax burden does not require a sprawling list. It raises more than the UK as a share of GDP, yet reports only 60 taxes.

The system centres on social contributions, income tax, VAT, corporation tax, trade tax, and a small set of duties, with a few oddities such as coffee duty, a dog tax, and the solidarity surcharge, but nothing resembling the French long tail.

The structure traces back to the 1919 Reich financial reform and the post-war Basic Law, which made income tax, corporation tax, and VAT shared taxes split between federal, state, and municipal governments.

The lesson is that complexity is a choice rather than an unavoidable cost of funding a large state, the think tank said.

Where the UK sits

The UK falls between the two extremes in terms of count and below both in overall take. The think tank’s history of UK taxes shows the number rising sharply since 1991, even though the broad shape of the system held steady through most of the twentieth century.

The recent growth comes from environmental taxes, devolved taxes, behavioural charges, and small, segmented levies, often added without lifting the overall burden.

The UK sits 32nd of 38 OECD countries on the Tax Foundation index, below several states that tax more heavily, which points to design rather than rate as the drag on competitiveness.

Why the count matters

Each separate tax carries a compliance cost that lands hardest on business and reaches consumers through prices and wages.

A firm facing a new levy needs a new adviser, a fresh set of rules and a longer list of things it can and cannot do, regardless of how little that tax raises.

Germany shows the state can fund itself fully on a short, broad list, while France shows how a long tail of minor charges clogs the system without materially changing the total collected.

On current trends the UK is drifting toward the French model on count, though at the present rate it would take roughly 200 years to match France’s total.

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