Britain is an overtaxed country – true or false? Published statistics give a conflicting message. In 1972 total UK taxation, including social security contributions as a proportion of gross national product, came in about halfway down a list of OECD countries. Yet, as Dr Bracewell-Milnes shows in this timely paper, even in that year the UK tax burden on high earners was high, and on savers intolerably high.