Tax claims in the 2024 general election: fact checked

As polling day approaches, we’re rounding up the work we’ve done over the 2024 general election campaign in a series of easy-to-read guides to help you get the facts you need.

Claims about tax have dominated the election campaign, and this article lists our verdicts on some of the key claims we’ve seen from the major parties.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of the claims we’ve written about or fact checked, and there have been many accurate claims about tax made too, which we’ve not necessarily covered. So we wouldn’t suggest using these round-ups to judge how honest any party is overall. At the same time, just because we haven’t written about a particular claim doesn’t mean we’ve verified it as true.

Please follow the links to read our full fact checks on each of the claims below: these include links to all the sources we’ve used (so you can check our work for yourself).

“[A Labour government would] cost every working family £2,000 in higher taxes”

If there’s a single claim from any party about any topic which has dominated the 2024 general election, this might just be it. It’s one we’ve heard repeatedly from the Conservatives throughout the campaign—in debates, online ads, videos and more. But as we wrote back in the first week of June, this figure is not reliable, and is based on a series of assumptions. The way it has been used, without proper context and caveats, is misleading.

The £2,000 figure comes from a Conservative estimate of Labour’s “unfunded spending commitments”, but Labour has said this is “flawed” and many of the costings behind the calculation are uncertain. Even if the figure was right, we can’t be certain this money would be collected by raising taxes, and if it was, families are unlikely to be affected equally.

The figure is also a cumulative estimate—with the Conservatives claiming every working family will pay £2,000 more in taxes over the next four years, rather than annually.

The Office for Statistics Regulation, which provides independent regulation of official statistics, criticised the claim, warning that someone hearing the figure would have “no way of knowing that this is an estimate summed together over four years”.

“We’ve got the highest tax burden for 70 years”

This is another claim we’ve heard in one form or another (sometimes instead of “for 70 years” it’s “since the Second World War”) throughout the campaign, including from Labour, the Lib Dems and Reform UK. 

In the 2022/23 financial year, the so-called “tax burden” (tax revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product) was at the highest level in over 70 years. In the last financial year it fell slightly, but current Office for Budgetary Responsibility forecasts—which are based on existing government plans—show the tax burden is set to increase in each of the next five years, and to be the second highest level on record in 2028/29.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), both Labour and Conservative plans would see the tax burden rise over the next five years, though it’s forecast to increase more under Labour. We’ve written more about this and other tax burden claims here.

“Rishi Sunak has raised taxes 26 times”

During the BBC head-to-head debate on 26 June, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer claimed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had “raised tax 26 times”. And we’ve heard several similar claims too—for example in a different televised debate on 7 June, Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner claimed there have been 26 tax rises under the Conservatives. Earlier this year, prior to the election being called, we heard from Labour a number of times that there had been 26 or 25 tax rises since the last general election.  

When we looked into this in detail in January we found it was unclear how Labour arrived at this exact figure. What appeared to be the list of 25 rises was shared with us by a Labour shadow Treasury spokesperson—it included a range of tax changes since 2019, but seemed to omit others.The IFS says it’s actually likely there have been hundreds of specific tax rises (and cuts) since 2019, and what’s more significant is that we have just had “the biggest tax-raising parliament in modern times”.

“Taxes are being cut”

We fact-checked this claim in the Conservatives’ first party political broadcast at the beginning of the campaign, and it’s been repeated several times. 

It is true that the government has reduced National Insurance contributions. But as outlined above, the UK’s so-called ‘tax burden’ is high and forecast to increase further. 

We’ve also heard the Conservatives talk several times about having “cut the taxes of the average worker by £900” due to National Insurance reductions. 

This is missing context. The £900 figure refers to the amount an average full-time worker (earning around £35,000) will save as a result of a four percentage point reduction in NI contributions. But once the impact of other tax changes is factored in, including ongoing freezes to income tax thresholds, overall tax savings are lower.

“Under a future Labour government there’s a £1,000 retirement tax coming”

Another key Conservative claim has been that under a Labour government there will be a £1,000 “retirement tax”.

That refers to what the Conservatives say pensioners would have to pay in income tax under Labour, compared to under the Conservatives’ “Triple Lock Plus” plan.

Both parties say they would maintain the state pension triple lock and keep the income tax personal allowance frozen until 2028. But Labour would not set up a higher personal allowance for pensioners, as the Conservatives have pledged to. 

In the BBC debate on 27 June Rishi Sunak also said that pensioners would be “paying tax for the first time” under a Labour government. This could be true for some on the state pension. But many pensioners whose income is not solely from the state pension do already pay tax on their income, if their total income exceeds the personal allowance.

“[The Scottish government has] frozen council tax across Scotland”

In its manifesto, the Scottish National Party (SNP) claimed the Scottish government has “frozen council tax across Scotland”. 

As we explained in our manifesto analysis, council tax in Scotland was frozen in 2024/25, but looking at the SNP’s record over a longer period gives a more complex picture.

Council tax in Scotland was frozen between 2008/09 and 2016/17. It then increased between 2017/18 and 2020/21 (at capped rates), before being frozen again in 2021/22. Rates generally rose in 2022/23 and in 2023/24, before being frozen for this financial year. The Scottish government has not yet said if council tax will be frozen next year. 

“A share buyback tax… would raise around £1.4 billion a year”

The Liberal Democrat manifesto outlines a plan to introduce a 4% tax on share buyback schemes of FTSE-100 listed companies, which the party has claimed would raise £1.4 billion a year. 

But as we wrote in early June, the IFS has cast doubt on this, questioning whether the amount of money raised would be impacted by businesses changing their behaviour as a result of the new tax. The IFS said “there is no economic rationale for a tax on share buybacks”, and added: “Less would be raised from taxing share buybacks if firms change their financing strategies more than the Liberal Democrats expect.”

The Liberal Democrats have claimed their sums account for “potential changes in company behaviour”, however.

One last thought on the public finances

The IFS has criticised both the Conservatives and Labour for what it called a “conspiracy of silence” over the public finances, claiming the “raw facts” are “largely ignored” by both parties’ manifestos. Director Paul Johnson said they were “keeping entirely silent about their commitment to a £10 billion a year tax rise through a further three years of freezes to personal tax allowances and thresholds”.

Mr Johnson also cast doubt on the parties’ claims to have published “so-called ‘fully costed’ manifestos”.

We did not assess this point ourselves in our fact checks of all the main parties’ manifestos. But Labour’s does say “our plan for Britain is a fully costed, fully funded, credible plan”, while the Conservatives say “the measures in this manifesto are fully funded”.

Mr Johnson has also criticised some of the other parties, for instance saying that some proposals from Reform UK and the Green Party were “wholly unattainable [and help] to poison the entire political debate”.