Someone made a remark about how the Tories hate poor people, I'd just read Mark Pack's blogpost about how many Labour MPs voted against lowering the 50% tax rate, which had me thinking about how the Tories have massively helped poor people with last week's budget raising the income tax allowance, taking 2 million people out of income tax.
And that got me thinking about the income tax threshold generally, I believe in raising it to above the minimum wage is a great idea, taking all of the low paid out of tax, out of the employer's HR department even having to bother with the paperwork of taxing them, letting the low paid keep more of their hard earned money.
This blog says:-
We think raising the Income Tax allowance is the purest form of helping the poor.
So I took a look on the office of national statistics website for historical income tax thresholds, and then adjusted them for inflation and figured out which color of government were in power
The general idea is that if the government keeps the threshold level the same from one year to the next, because of inflation, it essentially means the threshold is lowered. Raising by the rate of inflation gives the patches of horizontal lines in my graph. The declining dots are when the government has kept the threshold at the previous years level and inflation has taken a bite.
This is my raw data:-
| Year | Threshold | Inflation adjusted | Government |
| 1953 | £110 | £2,491.00 | Con |
| 1954 | £110 | £2,416.00 | Con |
| 1955 | £110 | £2,373.00 | Con |
| 1956 | £120 | £2,478.00 | Con |
| 1957 | £120 | £2,362.00 | Con |
| 1958 | £140 | £2,658.00 | Con |
| 1959 | £140 | £2,581.00 | Con |
| 1960 | £140 | £2,566.00 | Con |
| 1961 | £140 | £2,541.00 | Con |
| 1962 | £140 | £2,457.00 | Con |
| 1963 | £140 | £2,356.00 | Con |
| 1964 | £140 | £2,310.00 | Lab |
| 1965 | £200 | £3,194.00 | Lab |
| 1966 | £220 | £3,048.00 | Lab |
| 1967 | £220 | £2,934.00 | Lab |
| 1968 | £220 | £2,862.00 | Lab |
| 1969 | £255 | £3,485.00 | Lab |
| 1970 | £325 | £4,215.00 | Con |
| 1971 | £325 | £3,961.00 | Con |
| 1972 | £460 | £5,124.00 | Con |
| 1973 | £595 | £6,188.00 | Con |
| 1974 | £625 | £5,950.00 | Lab |
| 1975 | £675 | £5,541.00 | Lab |
| 1976 | £735 | £4,858.00 | Lab |
| 1977 | £945 | £5,358.00 | Lab |
| 1978 | £985 | £4,826.00 | Lab |
| 1979 | £1,165 | £5,265.00 | Con |
| 1980 | £1,375 | £5,486.00 | Con |
| 1981 | £1,375 | £4,647.00 | Con |
| 1982 | £1,565 | £4,726.00 | Con |
| 1983 | £1,785 | £4,962.00 | Con |
| 1984 | £2,005 | £5,333.00 | Con |
| 1985 | £2,205 | £5,578.00 | Con |
| 1986 | £2,335 | £5,557.00 | Con |
| 1987 | £2,425 | £5,577.00 | Con |
| 1988 | £2,605 | £5,757.00 | Con |
| 1989 | £2,785 | £5,876.00 | Con |
| 1990 | £3,005 | £5,889.00 | Con |
| 1991 | £3,295 | £5,898.00 | Con |
| 1992 | £3,445 | £5,822.00 | Con |
| 1993 | £3,445 | £5,615.00 | Con |
| 1994 | £3,445 | £5,512.00 | Con |
| 1995 | £3,525 | £5,499.00 | Con |
| 1996 | £3,765 | £5,685.00 | Con |
| 1997 | £4,045 | £5,946.00 | Lab |
| 1998 | £4,195 | £5,998.00 | Lab |
| 1999 | £4,335 | £5,982.00 | Lab |
| 2000 | £4,385 | £5,963.00 | Lab |
| 2001 | £4,535 | £5,986.00 | Lab |
| 2002 | £4,615 | £5,999.00 | Lab |
| 2003 | £4,615 | £5,907.00 | Lab |
| 2004 | £4,745 | £5,883.00 | Lab |
| 2005 | £4,895 | £5,874.00 | Lab |
| 2006 | £5,035 | £5,890.00 | Lab |
| 2007 | £5,225 | £5,904.00 | Lab |
| 2008 | £6,035 | £6,517.00 | Lab |
| 2009 | £6,475 | £6,734.00 | Lab |
| 2010 | £6,475 | £6,798.00 | ConLib |
| 2011 | £7,475 | £7,848.00 | ConLib |
| 2012 | £8,105 | £8,105.00 | ConLib |
| 2013 | £9,205 | £8,560.00 | ConLib |
From looking at the graph and the numbers, it seems like the main step changes in the threshold level (from £2,400 to £5,900 and then to £8,000 in today's money) have occurred during Conservative governments. In fact, going by the past fifty years, where Conservatives and Labout have each had approximately 25 years in power, we can get these average increases in the threshold.
| Conservative and Libdems | Labour | |
| Average | £207.23 | £34.00 |
| Median | £149.50 | -£12.50 |
| Sum | £5,388.00 | £816.00 |
As a disclaimer, I'm not a Conservative voter myself, I just really like the idea of raising the income tax threshold to stop the government taking people's hard earned cash, and that seems to happen most during Conservative administrations.
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