Sir Tim criticised heavy taxes on pubs and fruit machines during an appearance on GB News on Friday. He complained of the “big tax differential between supermarkets and pubs”.
He added: “Pubs have lost an alarming half their beer volumes to supermarkets since 2000, which accelerated during the lockdowns.”
Addressing next week’s Budget, Sir Tim said: “There are so many taxes of one kind or another. Wetherspoon generates about £1bn for the Government and our profits are about 6-7pc of what we pay in tax. Don’t kill the golden goose.”
Separately, travellers at Heathrow were advised to get breakfast at Wetherspoon rather than splash out three times as much at one of the hub’s private lounges.
Which?, the consumers’ group, said passengers awaiting their flight at Terminal 5 would be better off buying a £14.50 breakfast at the Wetherspoon Crown Rivers rather than stumping up £42 to eat at the Club Aspire lounge, which rated bottom in a survey of 28 paid-for lounges.
The pub breakfast includes two fried eggs, bacon, two Lincolnshire sausages, baked beans, three hash browns, mushrooms and three slices of toast, with tea or coffee for £3.50 extra.
The breakfast offering at the Club Aspire lounge featured congealed scrambled eggs and lacked extras such as mushrooms or tomatoes, according to Which?.
An undercover inspector also “complained of stained, dirty plates, and the floor was covered in crumbs, despite it only being the start of the day”, it said, with food “very poor, on the whole”.
The survey concluded that terminal lounges overall – not including those run by airlines – were “expensive and lacklustre”, making an airport pub or restaurant a better option.
Rory Boland, editor of Which? Travel, said: “There was once a time when an airport lounge was a special treat, but our latest results say quite the opposite.
“Instead of paying over £40 for a lukewarm buffet breakfast on a dirty plate, you can get a lot more for your money by visiting a bar or restaurant inside the airport.”
A spokesman for No1 Lounges, which operates the lounge in Terminal 5, said the Which? review was “‘disappointing” but reflected “only a brief moment in time and may not represent the experience of the thousands of guests who use the lounge every week”.
Wetherspoon operates eight pubs at UK airports, including two each at Heathrow and Gatwick.
Collinson Group, the owner of the Club Aspire lounge at Heathrow, was contacted for comment.