While UK taxes are higher than in most other English-speaking developed economies (such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and the United States), they are considerably lower than in most other western European countries (average tax revenue amongst the EU14. Read more was 39.9% of GDP.
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Here are five facts that show why we should tax the rich far more:

    The total wealth of the richest 1,000 people in Britain in April 2016 was over £575 billion. It had risen by £29 billion in a year and has more than doubled since the start of the financial crisis in 2008.
    The richest 10 percent have nearly half the total wealth in Britain.
    Chief executives at Britain’s top firms on average rake in £5.3 million a year, 386 times more than workers paid the national living wage.
    Very wealthy people have had more wealth stuffed into their pockets by tax cuts—again and again. In 1973, the top rate of income tax, paid by the very rich, was 75 percent. Labour’s right wing chancellor Denis Healey raised it to 83 percent in 1974. For nine years of Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government the top rate was 60 percent. Today it is 45 percent.
    A third of Britain is owned by 1,200 families descended from the aristocracy. In Scotland 432 people own more than half of all private rural land