Tax grab on London and the South-East tops £100billion

20 out of 25 constituencies with the highest bills are in the capital

- Nicholas Cecil

THE income tax grab on London and the South-East has topped more than £100 billion a year for the first time, official figures revealed today.

They show Londoners paid £59.3 billion to the Treasury annually and residents in the South-East £41.4 billion, just over half the total for the whole of England of £198 billion.

The bill is being driven up by the Chancellor's stealth tax freeze on the thresholds for paying different rates of income tax. About a million people in London and the South-East will have been brought into paying the higher rate of income tax due to the threshold freezes by 2027-28, according to figures from the House of Commons Library.

Twenty out of the 25 parliamentary constituencies with the highest income tax bills were in London. Kensington handed over £3.37 billion, slightly less than the whole of Northern Ireland at £3.44 billion.

Second highest was the Cities of London and Westminster at £3.15 billion, followed by Hampstead and Kilburn at £3.06 billion, Chelsea and Fulham £2.87 billion, Richmond Park £1.95 billion, Westminster North £1.87 billion and Battersea £1.68 billion.