Taxes over a lifetime

Which taxes does one life meet?

• 18First job. Earning below the Personal Allowance of £12,570, they pay no income tax. They may still pay National Insurance, because its threshold is set separately and is lower. Every purchase already carries VAT.
  Paying: National Insurance, VAT.
• 22Graduate salary. Now over the Personal Allowance, income tax starts at 20% on the part above it. Employer National Insurance is being paid on their behalf, at a cost they never see on the payslip.
  Paying: Income tax, National Insurance, Employer NI, VAT.
• 25First car. Vehicle Excise Duty every year, and fuel duty plus VAT on every litre. On the current pump price, tax is close to half of what they spend on fuel.
  Paying: Vehicle Excise Duty, Fuel duty, VAT, Insurance Premium Tax.
• 31Buying a first home. Stamp duty falls due on completion, in cash, on top of the deposit. First-time buyer relief lifts the starting threshold to £300,000. From then on, council tax every year: the average Band D bill in England is £2,411.
  Paying: Stamp duty, Council tax.
• 40Higher earnings. Crossing the higher-rate threshold means 40% on the part of income above it, not on all of it. Because the threshold is frozen, this happens to more people each year at the same real income.
  Paying: Income tax at the higher rate, National Insurance.
• 55Selling an investment. Capital gains tax on the profit above the annual exempt amount, now £3,000 after being cut from £12,300 in three years.
  Paying: Capital gains tax.
• 67Retiring. National Insurance stops on earnings at state pension age, but income tax does not: the state pension and any private pension above the Personal Allowance are taxable. Council tax, VAT and duties carry on exactly as before.
  Paying: Income tax, Council tax, VAT.
• AfterThe estate. Inheritance tax at 40% on anything above the nil-rate band of £325,000, or £500,000 where a home passes to direct descendants; both have been frozen, the first since 2009. Around one estate in twenty pays anything at all. Probate costs £526 whether or not tax is due.
  Paying: Inheritance tax, Probate fee.

Fees, fines and stealth taxes over the same life

The taxes above are only part of what dealing with the state costs. The same illustrative person also pays fees for passports, licences, certificates and prescriptions, the odd fine, and more income tax than the headline rates suggest because thresholds are frozen. Each figure is today's fee from this site's fee pages; each count is an assumption, stated in full.

Frozen thresholds add about £979 a year for someone earning £35,000 in 2026–27, compared with thresholds that had risen with inflation. The freeze runs for 10 years, from 2021 to 2031. Multiplying this year's figure by 10 gives about £9,800, which is a rough guide only: the gap was smaller in the early years of the freeze and will be larger in the last. The method is on what frozen thresholds cost a household.

An illustrative life, not a forecast. Every fee is the current one from the fee pages on this site; every count is an assumption, stated next to it. Council tax, VAT, duties and the other taxes are in the walk-through above rather than this table, so nothing is counted twice. Fees differ in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where prescriptions, for example, are free.

Checked 22 September 2026. Source: HM Passport Office (Home Office). Checked by hand 22 September 2026.

What does the shape tell you?

Three things stand out from putting it in one place. The first is that the taxes people argue about most are not the ones they pay most: income tax and National Insurance together dwarf everything else over a lifetime, while inheritance tax, which generates far more heat, is paid by a small minority of estates.

The second is how much is invisible. Employer National Insurance never appears on a payslip. VAT is in the shelf price. Business taxes reach people through prices and wages. A great deal of what an ordinary person pays is never itemised anywhere they can see it.

The third is that the burden moves across a life. It is light in the first years of work, heaviest in mid-career, and shifts in retirement from taxes on earning to taxes on spending and property. A tax system that looks fair at one age can look very different at another.

What does this not tell you?

It is not a calculation of what you will pay. It is one made-up life, priced at today's rates, to show the sequence and the relative scale. Real lives differ enormously: renting rather than buying removes stamp duty and changes who pays council tax, self-employment changes the National Insurance position entirely, and living in Scotland or Wales changes several of these figures.

Every figure used here is the current one from the relevant page on this site, so if a rate changes tonight this page changes with it. Each tax named links to its own page with the full detail.