Rachel Reeves begs us to back Britain - then hits us with SEVEN hidden taxes if we do

Investing is good for the economy, and in the long run, it's usually good for savers too. Reeves wants to steer Britons away from hoarding cash and instead put their money to work in UK businesses.

That's why she's been mulling over cutting the annual £20,000 Cash ISA allowance, possibly slashing it to just £4,000. While that idea appears to have been shelved for now, her goal is clear - to get us out of cash and into shares.

And this isn't the only way she's trying to do it. Through her Mansion House reforms, Reeves is encouraging our pension funds to pump more money into UK stocks and riskier areas like private equity.

Critics warn this could backfire badly. Forcing money into UK equities may depress returns if businesses underperform. Private equity carries higher risks. Reeves says this will boost growth. Others suspect her real motive is to drive up tax receipts.

Given how aggressively our investment returns are taxed, the Treasury stands to make a lot more money out of this than we do.

Reeves isn't wrong about the potential rewards from investing. Over the long term, shares have beaten cash.

An investor who maxed out their Cash ISA since they launched in 1999 would now have around £542,692, assuming average savings rates.

If they had used the same allowance to buy a FTSE 100 tracker they'd be sitting on £773,362. That's an extra £230,670. A US tracker fund would likely have delivered even more.

So for long-term investors, shares remain the better bet, despite the inevitable bumps along the way. But if Reeves is hoping we'll all join in, she's being oddly quiet about one important detail: how heavily the government taxes us when we do invest.

Investing in shares exposes people to seven separate tax charges. First comes income tax, levied on the money we earn in the first place. Second, National Insurance. Third, stamp duty, in the shape of a 0.5% fee every time we buy UK shares.

Outside of an ISA or pension, investors also pay tax on both dividend income AND capital gains. So that's four and five. The tax-free dividend allowance was slashed to just £500 a year under the Tories, who also slashed the capital gains tax (CGT) annual exemption to just £3,000. So investors are already paying more of it.

Reeves also hiked CGT rates in her Budget.

Even in death, there's no respite. Shareholdings may be liable for tax number six - inheritance tax. Spend your investment gains instead and VAT kicks in. So that's number seven. No wonder Reeves is cheering us on.

We've come to expect this. Today, tax is everywhere. We pay insurance premium tax on motor, home and pet policies. Air passenger duty when we fly. Fuel duty at the pumps.

Then there's council tax, green levies on energy, booze duty, tobacco duty, gambling levies - the list goes on.

Taxes are at a post-war high, and Reeves is planning more. Some left-wing MPs are pushing for a wealth tax too. That would make tax number eight on investments. Apologies if I've missed one. It's hard to keep count.

The more Reeves taxes, the harder it becomes to achieve her goal of growing the economy. Taxes are weighing down investment, savings and spending. It's hard to imagine investors will have any money left once the Chancellor is done with it.