UK taxpayers want higher levies on big tech companies, survey shows | Tax and spending

Taxpayers want the UK to increase levies on giant global technology companies such as Facebook owner Meta, Google and Amazon, a survey of Britons’ attitudes on corporate taxes suggests.

The polling released on Monday by the Fair Tax Foundation – abody providing businesses with certification around responsible tax conduct – found that 67% of respondents believe that the government should charge higher digital services taxes on multinational technology groups “to increase their overall tax contribution in the UK”.

The UK’s digital services tax was introduced in 2020 and is a 2% tax on revenues of search engine, social media or marketplace companies with UK sales of more than £25m, or £500m globally.

It is paid by only a handful of tech firms and raised about £800m for the exchequer in 2024-25, according to official figures.

However, the levy has had its critics, including those who argue that it results in higher fees for paying users.

Predictably, there has also been strong opposition from the US, where the president, Donald Trump, has threatened to impose “a big tariff” on the UK if it does not drop the tax on US technology companies.

The Fair Tax Foundation study also found that three-quarters of the British public would prefer to “work for” and “shop with” a business that can prove it is paying its fair share of tax.

“This research demonstrates that the UK is still at its core a fair tax nation,” said Paul Monaghan, the foundation’s chief executive. “The UK public care about many issues, but ‘tax justice’ is consistently at the top of their concerns when it comes to corporate conduct. They want to see government do much more to ensure that all businesses, both large and small, pay their fair share of tax.”

Each year, the body polls about 2,000 adults across Great Britain, with the sample based on census data collected by the Office for National Statistics.

Results for the questions posed have remained reasonably consistent, with support for a digital services tax registering 69% in 2025 and 67% in 2026. Over the past 10 years of polling, “never less than 70% of Brits have wanted to work for a fair tax company”, the report added.