AIBU to feel disheartened by earning into the higher tax band?

Yes, that's just stupid. The reason we find ourselves in our current position is because successive administrations both left and right have pursued fiscal drag as a deliberate policy.

Oh shush. If you have someone earning over £100k then you are in the top % of earners and don’t need bloody funded childcare. I mean, sure it would be nice but no-one on a career path earning that amount is going to suddenly take a step back and go ‘ hold on a minute’
Not anyone I know anyway.
We didn’t get it, and managed fine.
my only beef with that policy is that it should be a household income of £100k not just if one person earns £100k so there’s not the situation where 2 x parents can earn £90k each but still get funding.

You will pay 40% tax, 2% NI and 9% student loan = 51% deduction. So every extra pound you earn, the majority of it goes to the tax man.

Could you ask your job for a pay cut to allow you back into the lower tax band?
Or where I live I get a tax return on 80% of charity donations. Maybe that will get you back to your previous earnings?

Don’t want to do that I guess? Then be happy about the fact you are still earning a lot more than plenty of people who work just as hard as you do, often in critical and life-saving jobs that you probably wouldn’t be willing to do (care assistant, cleaner, nurse, nursery teacher, etc.) and stop moaning.

This.
Born in a NHS hospital, as were my children. educated in state schools, given free school meals. I was mid 30s before I significantly started paying a lot of tax, before that my low paying, entry level jobs meant paying tax, but not a lot.

And if you have two children who need childcare while earning over 100K then you are essentially losing 24K a year in missed 30hr funded childcare per year. It's no wonder people prefer to go part time and stay on low wages. There is literally no incentive to work hard in this country

It's not though, is it? Taxes went up under Sunak and the Tories to their highest rate since WW2.

Unfortunately this means the entirety of any pay increases will be taxed at the higher rate. So a 3% cost of living increase (this is normal in the private sector over the last few years) will mean bringing home a little over 1% more each month. Take home pay going up that slowly when food, council tax, mortgage or rent are going up at many multiples of that amount is depressing.

Ah yes. The Conservative and Unionist Party are famously a bunch of reds.

Fiscal drag, ladies and gentlemen.

Can somebody explain to me like I'm 5 what the deal is with student loans? I'm going to be earning over 50k soon (currently 49k) and have Plan 1 loans in Wales. Am I going to be paying significantly more or something?

Of course the tax take has risen under Labour! It’s called fiscal drag!

This.

And reflect on the times earlier in your career / life when you were NOT a contributor… when you had child benefit and were paying v little tax and NI, free nursery hours, no CT as a student etc etc. There are times in our lives when we receive more from the system, and times when we contribute more.

Increase your pension contributions so you remain in the lower tax band, it's always a good idea.

Without fiscal drag the threshold would be 70k - keeping it at 50k builds the wrong incentives into the system

Yep this is us.
No I won’t increase my hours.
9% mandatory pension.

No free 30 hours childcare either.
Costs ~£900/month for 3 days (with the 20% tax free bit)
So that’s 11,100 a year for childcare. Which at 67% tax + pension = £44,000

44000 pound pay rise needed just to equal something I’d get for free in England.

Dont move to Scotland!!!!!

@Feelslikeaneternity and with plan 2 loans, we are now seeing people getting to that earning level so it’s a 71% rate - not including pension contributions

Yep, until all the high earners leave or reduce their hours because they are paying too much tax.

Let's see what the socialists do then. It will serve them right when they have to start paying for things themselves.

If people could see improvements in services, in their personal lives I think many wouldn’t begrudge paying higher taxes

but none of us are and now struggling to make ends meet is hitting upper middle earners

why a mess this country is in, I don’t blame people going part time and getting UC top ups

They call it the £100k cliff edge and it’s why if you look at the numbers there are many people on 99k (well maybe not “many”, but relatively speaking) and then fewer above that. The loss of the personal allowance is tapered off actually, sorry I got that wrong, but for each £1 you earn over 100k you lose a bit more personal allowance and you also pay 40% income tax, so effectively you pay 60% tax between 100 and 125k by which point you’ve lost the whole
personal allowance and you pay 45% income tax only.

so you can see why a promotion with more hours and responsibility that takes you from 99k to 109k salary might not feel worth it when you take home only £4k of that extra £10k that’s in your gross salary.

I’m not sure ‘describing what tax-free savings options there are for higher earners’ counts as providing financial advice really.

You can’t claim there’s all sorts of ways to be avoiding tax on savings and then be unable to actually provide any examples of how this is done.

If you are an employee, you can pay more into your pension to reduce your taxable income to £50k and you will be paying 20% again.

You actually think I'm going to provide free financial advice on a public forum out of the goodness of my heart? Laugh away! The joke is on you.

YANBU.
your losing half your income and too much of that goes to people who either choose not work or work part time. As others have said pension is the best option.

You'll be flamed on here but I get it. I earn 99k for 4 days a week and have no plans to go back to full-time as it wouldn't be worth it. Yes I could pay excess into pension, but the future is guaranteed to nobody, I'd rather enjoy my time now with my family.