Canary Wharf, London
Corporation tax is contributing less, but employee taxes are going up Reuters

The amount of tax the UK government collected from the financial services sector has risen to pre-recession levels.

HMRC received £65.6bn from financial institutions in the tax year 2013/2014, which was the highest amount since 2007. The figure is an increase of 0.9% on the previous year and accounted for 11.5% of total government tax receipts.

A report from PwC shows that the biggest single source of tax revenue was employers' national insurance contribution, which accounted for 34.8% of tax collected from the financial sector.

In 2007, the government collected £67.8bn from the sector – but the largest slice of that came from corporation tax, which is now just the third biggest net contributor. This reflects the coalition government's policy of lowering corporation tax; on 1 April 2013, it was reduced from 24% to 23%. Corporation tax paid by the financial sector went down from £6.5bn to £5.4bn, year-on-year.

The report shows that 1.1 million people are employed by the financial services, with £30bn in employment-related taxes going towards the government coffers over the last tax year. The average financial sector employee paid £27,000 in tax over the course of the year.

Within finance, banks are the largest employers and also the largest payers of tax. Banks account for 29.5% of financial employees, but pay 59.5% of the tax.