Or the country can experience a reduction in the quality of goods and services being delivered, for example instead of being able to see a doctor, some portion of the population is now expected to consult with someone less qualified.
It's high in historical perspective because the austerity years of the 2010s and Brexit choked growth. But we could still choose to spend more on services without being unusual in European terms
Since 1965 companies pay a much lower corporation tax.
Tax to GDP has been a little bit up and down but only recently did it breach the 1970s peaks.
I don’t think this matches with “ Taxation in the UK is currently at the highest levels in recorded history.”
Since it's not straightforward to get figures for before 1965:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_corporation_tax...
> Until 1965, companies were subject to income tax on their profits[11] at the same rates as was levied on individual taxpayers
> In addition to income tax, companies were also subject to a profits tax, which was deducted from company profits when determining the income tax liability
> At the time of Hugh Gaitskell's 1951 budget, the profits tax was 50% for distributed profits and 10% for undistributed profits.
> The tax rates fell to 22.5% on distributed profits and 2.5% on undistributed profits by 1957
This means that in 1951, if a company had a profit of 100, the taxes were *at least* (I'm using undistributed profits, not taking into account higher rates, etc.etc.) 52.75
(10% of 100, plus 47.5% of the remaining 90% of 100)
The 47.5% is the standard rate of "nine shillings and sixpence in the pound", per https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1951/apr/...
In 1959, a company with a profit of 100, would've instead paid in taxes *at least* 40.28
(2.5% of 100, plus 38.75% of the remaining 97.5% of 100)
The 38.75 is the standard rate per https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1989-03-03/debates/3cc...
see also: "seven shillings and ninepence in the pound" per https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1959/apr/...
The current corporation tax main rate is 25% (the small profits rate is even less: 19%)
In any case, the low rate of taxation is only one element of the persistent austerity policies that have been in place since the 2009 economic crash.
In terms of government spending, we have easily-obtainable data on the NHS[2] and those available by thinktanks like IFS[3]. The NHS spending is low (and again consistently lower than our peers in Europe). I find the charts from the IFS interesting because it doesn't show a lot of change in spending year-on-year (relative to GDP) since the '90s, except for the catastrophes.
But the table at the bottom is very interesting. Health £ spending up, but equivalent to 2-3% increase YoY, which barely keeps up with inflation. Education, public order & housing spending are all DOWN in absolute terms, forget about inflation. Defense, social security, transport all increased at a rate less than inflation. (Obviously a huge increase in debt spending recently due to Covid measures.)
That there is long-term austerity exemplified. No myth.
[1] https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-kingdom.p...
[2] https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-...
[3] https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/what-does-gov...
What's going on is that the UK population is greying and far older than it once was, and huge portions of the UK budget are going towards paying pensioners, the NHS etc. Worse, the triple lock ensures that this part of the UK budget is essentially inflexible. The perceived "austerity" is jsut a reflection of demographic trends.