Four million workers would be £1,000 a month better off had Boris Johnson’s pledge to cut taxes for higher earners been fulfilled, figures have revealed. Raising the higher-rate tax threshold to £80,000 was one of the former prime minister’s key leadership campaign promises. Before winning the leadership contest, Mr Johnson promised to deliver tax cuts that would drive economic growth. Writing in The Telegraph in 2019, he said: “We should be raising thresholds of income tax – so that we help the huge numbers that have been captured in the higher rate by fiscal drag.” The move would have lifted almost four million out of the 40pc tax rate, data obtained from HM Revenue and Customs in a freedom of information request showed. It would have saved taxpayers £48.4bn in 2022-23 – or £12,000 on average each per year. But by the end of his term, Britain’s tax burden was climbing rapidly and is now expected to hit 37pc of GDP by 2028-29, higher than before the pandemic. This is because of the Government’s decision in 2021 to abandon the usual uprating of tax thresholds in line with inflation. The freeze on tax bands was initially supposed to last four...