London has paid £15.1bn in property taxes
London has paid a massive £15.1bn in property taxes according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
New figures from the OECD show that the UK has the highest property taxes in the world, and London pays a fifth of the total collected.
Read more: Top industry groups hit out at proposed changes to business rates
In 2014, the last year for which OECD figures are available, property taxes were 12.7 per cent of the total tax collected, increasing by £4.44bn on the year before.
These property taxes included council tax, business rates, stamp duty land tax, and, in Scotland, land and building transaction tax.
Many in the property industry were hoping that chancellor Philip Hammond would use his first Autumn Statement to row back on changes to property taxes made by his predecessor George Osborne.
Osborne increased the tax rates on high-end homes, which has caused prices on prime properties in central London to plummet. Some asking prices have been slashed by more than 30 per cent.
Read more: This is how much beer pubs will have to sell to fight business rate rise
Property taxes on businesses are also set to rise next April when the government's business rates re-evaluation comes into effect.
The tax increase will be based on how much a property's rental value has increased over the past six years. Given that rents have risen so dramatically in central London over this time period, the capital is also set to be hit particularly hard by changes to business rates.
Mark Rigby, chief executive of CVS rent and rates specialists, said: "For far too long the capital's property has been used by successive governments as a tax cash cow. It must stop. The position in London is set to worsen dramatically as next April the 32 boroughs of London and the City will see their rateable values used to determine rates a bills increase of a massive 24 per cent."