Retail investors’ anxiety over higher taxes and policy changes has reached its highest ever level in IG’s latest biannual sentiment tracker.

Its survey of 1,800 UK investors found that 46 per cent were worried about how taxes and policy changes could affect their investments over the coming year.

This represented a 13 percentage point increase from June 2025 and a 31 percentage point rise from when the tracker was launched in June 2022.

Despite the surge, tax and policy were not investors’ top investment concerns for the first half of 2026, with worries around geopolitical conflict (51 per cent) and political uncertainty (50 per cent) topping the list.

However, concerns over geopolitical conflict were less pronounced that the first half of 2025, with 61 per cent of investors citing it as a worry in June 2025.

IG found that broader economic worries were also rising, with 80 per cent of investors saying they were concerned about the state of the UK economy, the highest level since December 2022.

Concerns over government debt also rose slightly from 36 per cent in June 2025 to 38 per cent, which IG said reflected wider unease about the outlook for public finances.

"Our latest client sentiment tracker highlights how sensitive investors are to policy changes,” commented IG chief market analyst UK, Chris Beauchamp.

"In recent years, across different governments, we’ve seen dividend tax hikes, reductions in capital gains allowances, and frozen income tax thresholds. Investors are naturally worried that this trend is going to continue.

“So while it’s encouraging to see steps being taken by the current government to boost retail investing in the UK, to grow participation in a meaningful way and give existing investors more confidence, these efforts must be backed by supportive policy. We need stable conditions to spark a stronger investing culture.”

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