Millions of people are paying more in council tax than they are in income tax, an answer to a parliamentary question has revealed.

Over 5 million pay more tax to local authorities than to the IR taxman and the proportion is set to increase said Treasury officials to MPs as reported in the Financial Times newspaper.

The Treasury Red Book states that council tax as a proportion of all taxes amounts to 4.2%, the officials replied to MPs. When asked if that figure could rise to 10%, Andrew Lewis, head of the tax policy team, said there would be "no insuperable difficulties." "That is a view that can and should be considered," Mr Lewis told a committee of MPs

In a written answer to a Parliamentary question by Peter Bottomley MP, John Pullinger of the National Statistics Office replied:

“Based on information provided by respondents to the survey the number of households in Great Britain paying more in net council tax than in income tax was approximately 4.8 million in 1997/98 and 5.5 million in 2001/02.”

“More recent information is not yet available. Net council tax is defined as gross council tax less reported council tax benefits and discounts. Please note that these figures refer to the total tax paid by households (which may contain more than one person paying income tax) rather than by householders.”

“The analysis includes measures of income inequality for the United Kingdom as a whole based on data from the Expenditure and Food Survey. This is a sample survey covering about 7,500 households in the UK and, as with any statistical sample survey, estimates are subject to sampling error.”