UK’s banks will have to pay £40bn in extra taxes over a decade after being hit with industry specific levies imposed by Chancellor George Osborne.
According to estimates by the British Bankers’ Association (BBA), from 2010-2020 banks will have to pay an extra tax of £4bn per year in addition to the tens of billions of other existing taxes including corporation tax, employment taxes, irrecoverable VAT as well as business rates.
The calculations by BBA come after Osborne announced a new 8% surcharge on bank’s profits in the summer budget.
The surcharge, which will be effective from 1 January 2016, is the fifth new bank-specific tax measure launched.
The BBA said that the bank levy was paid by 30 banks, but the surcharge will be levied on hundreds of banks and building societies.
Although the Chancellor has also announced reductions in the bank levy over the next six years, the summer budget will add a further £1.7bn of tax to the sector over the same period.
BBA chief executive Anthony Browne said: "Banks expect to pay their fair share of tax. But they do not expect to be se singled out by Chancellor for repeated raids which make it harder to lend to businesses and create jobs.
"It is this environment which led the chief executive of one foreign bank to compare the behaviour of our government to that of an African dictatorship."