Shockingly, this is three weeks longer than before covid, which was just five years ago, showing how fiscal drag is pulling millions more into higher rates of tax.

The Adam Smith Institute said Tax Freedom was 21 days earlier in late May before the pandemic and back in 2009 Tax Freedom Day fell as early as 18 May.

This year each British taxpayer will have to work six days longer before their earnings become solely their own, meaning the tax burden ‘could be higher than it was during WW2 and the Napoleonic Wars’, according to the Adam Smith Institute.

James Lawson, chair of the Adam Smith Institute, said: ‘Britons are now working nearly half the year just to pay taxes — and the burden is only getting heavier. A tax system that consumes 162 days of our working year is simply not sustainable.

‘