What does my tax pay for?

What if I live in Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales?

While some things are budgeted and paid for by the UK government across all four nations, such as defence and pensions, the Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh governments each manage their own budget for most of their country’s public spending.

That means the chart above won’t represent your country’s budget, but still provides a rough idea of the types of things that tax is spent on, since each government budgets for similar things.

So, what does my tax pay for?

Social Protection

A significant portion of your taxes goes towards social protection, providing a safety net for those facing challenging circumstances. This covers areas like housing benefit, state pensions and other programmes that support people who are unemployed, disabled, or in need of additional support. By contributing to these programmes, you’re helping to build a society that cares for its members and provides a helping hand when it’s needed most.

Public Services

Several of the sections in the pie chart can be categorised together as public services. This includes:

• Health – funding for the National Health Service (NHS), ensuring that everyone has access to healthcare without worrying about hefty bills.
• Education – supporting schools and universities, making quality education accessible to all.
• Public order and safety – funding the police, ambulance and fire services.
• Personal social services – i.e. social care services for children or adults in need or at risk. This includes services such as care homes, the child protection services, support for people with learning or physical disabilities, etc.

Together, public services take the biggest chunk of your tax, but they form the backbone of our society and play a huge part in the quality of life for people in the UK.

Other areas

Let’s take a brief overview of the remaining sections on the pie chart:

• Debt interest – paying off the UK’s debt
• Defence – the UK’s armed forces (including peacekeeping forces), military facilities and equipment
• Transport – maintenance and improvement of roads, bridges and public transport.
• Industry, agriculture and employment – supporting the UK’s economic growth through industry, agriculture and improving unemployment rates.
• Housing and environment – building more homes and measures to improve how the UK looks after the environment.
• Other (including EU transactions) – smaller spending areas are grouped together. ‘EU transactions’ refers to the UK’s contributions to financial commitments made by the EU before Brexit.