British adults want relief on council tax and VAT, but most are unwilling to accept lower spending on public services to fund it, according to new research from tax filing platform Taxd.
Taxd‘s If I Were In Charge report asked a simple question: if you ran the Treasury, what would you change? Nearly six in ten adults (58 per cent) said they would cut council tax, against just 7 per cent who would raise it. Half (50 per cent) would cut VAT. Yet only a third (33 per cent) said they would cut taxes if it meant spending less on public services.
That gap leaves the Chancellor with a harder choice than the familiar argument over whether taxes should rise or fall, with the Budget approaching and household finances under scrutiny.
A question of fairness
The research also points to a sense of unfairness. Some 56 per cent of respondents said the tax system is unfair to people like them, compared with 18 per cent who said it is fair. Among those who feel it is unfair, 43 per cent said tax rises had not been matched by better public services.
The findings are not simple anti-tax sentiment, however. Many respondents said they would be willing to pay more if they could see where the money goes.
Arjun Kumar, co-founder and co-CEO of Taxd, said: “What comes through is not a demand for simply more or less tax, but for a different shape of taxation: lighter on work and everyday spending, and more willing to look at wealth.”
“The same answers show the bind any Chancellor is in. Nearly six in ten adults would cut council tax and half would cut VAT, but only a third would accept lower public spending to pay for it. Every pound taken off one tax has to be found somewhere else, and an honest debate has to start there.”
Kumar is a former tax director at PwC who left to build Taxd, an HMRC-recognised self-assessment filing platform that supports more than 20,000 users.
The core data comes from a nationally representative Opinium poll of 2,050 UK adults, conducted between 9 and 11 September 2026, supported by 1,173 open responses gathered through Taxd’s public microsite.
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