History of Taxation in Britain Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

History of Taxation in Britain - Research Paper Example The twentieth century started with high spending, which was based on war spending. The First and Second World Wars both lead to very large increases in public spending and rather smaller increases in tax. The Korean War is reported to have a discernible effect, but neither the Falklands (1982) nor the Gulf (1991) conflict seems to have had an impact on spending. The need for more revenue during the war led to increases in tax rates, increases in the coverage of existing taxes and the introduction of wholly new taxes. Perhaps the most dramatic change was to income tax. Prior to the war, income tax had never been a mass tax. It was first introduced in 1799 and was permanently in place from 1842, but there were still fewer than 4 million taxpayers in 1938. By the end of the war, the number of taxpaying families had increased to over 12 million, an increase which was sustained into the following decades. The two marked periods of growth in the last quarter of the century, in the early 1980s and the late 1980s / early 1990s; both the period experienced turmoil in the economic activities of the country, which led both to shrinking GDP and to higher cyclical government spending as unemployment increased gradually. ... pretend as, for each UK household the government allocated 14,000 and 15,000, the amount is equivalent to the post-tax income a childless couple would need to be in the middle of the income distribution, or the amount required by the retired UK national. Local taxes have been an important type of revenue for the UK economy, it accounted for one-third of total revenues, however, its importance declined after World War I and II. 'In the early twentieth century, these accounted for up to a third of total revenues, but their importance declined as the taxes required to pay for both World Wars were raised at the national level', (A. Dilnot and C. Emmerson, 'The economic environment', in A. H. Halsey with J. Webb, Twentieth Century British Social Trends, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2000). Revising the British history of tax returns, local taxes, (chiefly a property tax called 'rates', which had both business and household components) was estimated to be seven percent of GGR. However, after 196 0, the local taxes represented more than 10 percent of GGR, and have remained consistent throughout. However, from 2000 onwards, local taxes have again become much less significant, representing only between 3 and 4 percent of revenues in the last decade of the twentieth century.  Ã‚