Blue wall Tory seats hit hardest by Jeremy Hunt’s ‘stealth’ tax
Voters in “blue wall” Conservative seats will be worst hit by Jeremy Hunt’s stealth tax rises, a new analysis of official figures shows.
For the first time, HM Revenue & Customs has released data breaking down its estimates for the number of basic and higher-rate tax payers in each constituency.
An analysis of the figures suggests that in some Tory-held seats in England, more than 10,000 voters will either have been brought into a tax for the first time or moved into the higher rate compared with what they were paying when the rate band freezes were announced in 2022.
Jeremy Hunt’s policy, revealed in the Budget, will pull 3.7 million people into the basic rate of tax
Among these seats are a large number of constituencies in which the Tories face a strong electoral challenge. These include the chancellor’s own seat of South West Surrey, where about 8,000 people will pay a higher rate of tax this financial year. The figure will increase to 9,600 in 2028, when the freeze is due to come to an end.
Almost 19 per cent of all adults in the constituency are already higher-rate taxpayers, and 4,000 voters earn more than £125,000 and pay the additional rate of tax.
In Maidenhead, Theresa May’s seat, about 7,000 voters are expected to have been brought into the higher rate of tax by the end of this year, rising to 9,000 by 2028.
Other constituencies held by senior Tories that will be particularly badly affected include Esher & Walton, held by the former foreign secretary Dominic Raab. Both Raab and May are standing down at the next election and the seats are seen as vulnerable to the Liberal Democrats, who carried out the analysis.
The Lib Dems said that, overall, 1.5 million people in English Conservative-held seats could be dragged into the higher rate of income tax thanks to the five-year freeze to tax thresholds announced after Liz Truss’s mini-budget.
Of the 25 worst affected seats, 17 are held by Conservatives, five by Labour and three by the Lib Dems.
The analysis also provided a snapshot of the richest constituencies in the country by tax contribution.
The largest proportion of higher rate taxpayers was in Twickenham, followed by Richmond Park, both of which are held by the Lib Dems. Labour’s “richest” seat is Battersea in west London, followed by Putney and Tooting.
The constituency with the largest number of additional-rate taxpayers was Cities of London & Westminster, where about 10 per cent of all adults earned more than £125,000. This was followed by Kensington & Chelsea and Fulham.
Sarah Olney, the Liberal Democrat MP for Richmond Park, called Hunt’s tax rises “unfair”
At the other end of the scale, only 3 per cent of voters in Leicester South pay the higher rate of tax, and the figure is 4 per cent in Birmingham’s Ladywood constituency.
Sarah Olney, the Liberal Democrat’s Treasury spokeswoman, said the party would highlight the impact of the changes in high-profile target seats, including Hunt’s.
“The Conservative government is clobbering their own voters with years of unfair tax rises,” she said. “The hard-working middle have already faced the biggest fall in living standards on record, yet Jeremy Hunt is compounding their misery with his freeze on income tax thresholds.”