Soaring tax receipts up nearly 10% in just 12 months as hike in employer national insurance reaps huge benefits for the Treasury, capital gains tax explodes, and record amount of VAT collected
As the total tax take heads inexorably towards the ominous one trillion pound figure under chancellor Rachel Reeves, the latest figures show HMRC collected £938.8bn in taxes in 2025-26, a huge increase of 9.3% from £858.6bn the previous tax year. In the past two years, the figure is up £110.2bn from £828.5bn in 2023-24, a significant 13.3% hike in revenues pouring into the Treasury.
To put this in context annual tax take over the last 20 years has grown from £428.6bn in 2006-07 during austerity to today’s £938.8bn, and it is 30.7%, up a full two percentage points as a proportion of GDP over that time.
VAT was the most ever collected at £180.7bn while corporation tax and related niche business taxes totalled a record £101.4bn, which HMRC said was up year on year due to ‘growth in onshore corporation tax receipts’.
Nat
