The total tax paid by the country has risen by £223billion a year to £517billion – or £20,700 per family. And the pain does not end there.

Thanks to higher charges levied by local councils, hospitals and quangos, the total cost of government has risen by more than £230billion a year.

The hard-hitting analysis will deepen voters’ anger at how Gordon Brown has picked their pockets during his reign at the Treasury and now 10 Downing Street.

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Former Treasury economist Mike Denham, who co-wrote the report for the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “The Government has used every trick in the book to drive up the tax burden, and ordinary families are paying a heavy price. People are beset by record levels of taxation and growing service charges, but there has been no improvement in services in return.

“We find ourselves paying more and more for less and less. With rocky economic times ahead, this rate of taxation simply cannot be sustained.”

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “The British public are being ripped off in the most shameful way.

“The cloak and dagger methods the Government is using to squeeze money out of hard-working people are deplorable.

“With fewer police stations, limited GPs’ hours, libraries closing, rarer bin collections and a host of other cuts, we are getting less for our money than ever.

“People are facing higher fuel bills, more expensive food and much bigger mortgage bills – and on top of all that they are being stealth-taxed and charged more than ever before. This con has got to stop.”

The report reveals how tax yields have soared way beyond official inflation rates.

The Government’s preferred Consumer Price Index has registered a 17 per cent increase since 1997, while the tax burden has risen by 51 per cent in real terms.

In 1997-98, levies such as income tax, National Insurance, council tax, VAT, air passenger duty, stamp duty, capital gains tax and inheritance tax raised the equivalent of about £12,200 per household.

By 2007-8 it was £20,700 – a 76 per cent or £8,500-a-year rise.

Some taxes have increased more than others, including stamp duty which is up by a whopping 314 per cent.

National Insurance has more than doubled and the amount of inheritance tax paid is up by 132 per cent.

Income tax yield is also up, by 96 per cent, despite cuts in the headline rate. One reason for that is Mr Brown’s extensive use of stealth tax, from his £5billion-a-year raid on penson funds to abolishing the lowest 10p income tax rate.

The report spells out how he has relied heavily on “fiscal drag” – failing to raise the thresholds at which tax is paid, so dragging increasing numbers of ordinary workers into higher tax bands.

Over 1.5million more people now pay the 40 per cent income tax rate than 10 years ago.

The same applies to stamp duty, where the threshold for the lowest rate would have been £183,000 rather than £125,000 if it had kept up with the growth in house prices.

Only a Daily Express crusade forced Mr Brown to increase inheritance tax thresholds.

Charges for public services have also seen a steep increase under Labour.

In the NHS, charges have increased by an estimated 186 per cent in the past 11 years, to £3.7billion a year. These include hospital parking, bedside telephone and TV, and dental charges.

Local authority fees have increased by an estimated 130 per cent, from about £5.5billion when Labour took power to about £12.6billion in 2007-8.

Extra costs piled on to local residents, on top of huge council tax bills, include school meals, pest control, library fines, parking charges and fines as well as London’s congestion charge.

Adding quango fees and other costs like passport charges, which have quadrupled to £72 under Labour, the report estimates that such expenses now cost people at least £17billion a year – nearly £700 per household.

And it is not as if taxpayers have seen services improve at the same rate as costs.

The report details hospital ward closures, the loss of out-of-hours GP services and the slump in availability of NHS dentists.

Thinktank Reform estimates these factors force the average family to spend £1,200 a year on private health care, over and above the £3,850 a year they pay in tax for the NHS.

Councils have slashed weekly rubbish collections, libraries and  public conveniences have closed and road maintenance has been cut back, while thousands of post offices have closed.