HMRC’s monthly tax statistics show growing tax revenues giving the Government a ray of hope after a tumultuous budget, say leading audit, tax and business advisory firm, Blick Rothenberg.
Tom Goddard, a Senior Associate at the firm, said: “The total tax receipts continue to grow year on year after a slight blip in August (where they were just under a billion pounds lower than August 2023) with total tax receipts up £24bn over the last year compared to the 12 months prior. This provides some much-needed financial optimism for the Government after a tumultuous budget which had many fearing the worse.”
He added: “The total tax collected over the last 12 months is now at over £842 billion and getting closer to the £850 billion mark, which will likely be hit in the next month with December traditionally being a good month for revenues.”
Tom said: “Labour’s commitment to increasing national living wage will also see HMRC’s highest revenue stream, income tax, continue its upward trend. Those increases and indeed those from the Employers National Insurance contributions won’t however filter through until after April 2025.”
He added: “However, there is still an approximate 8% increase on the year for income tax takings, higher than the current 2.3% consumer price inflation (CPI) figure, itself having jumped 0.6% in the last month. Not only are those wages for the UK’s lowest earners going to continue driving this increased tax taking, but Labour’s affirmation that income tax thresholds and the personal allowance will remain frozen until the 2028/29 tax year will continue to drag more and more people into the higher and upper rate tax bands.”
Tom said: “UK inheritance tax has been the centre of everyone’s attention in the last few weeks, but this tax brings in a relatively modest amount to the total tax take with the prior 12 months total being just shy of £8bn which is effectively 0.9% of the total HMRC receipts in the same period.”
He added: “It will be some time before any of the proposed changes to APR and BPR (Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief) show through with changes in those two reliefs not coming through April 2026 and IHT itself only being payable until the end of the sixth month after the date of death. So, at best, anyone caught by that is not going to show through until the November 2026 figures are released.”
