The top 10% of taxpayers contribute 60% of income tax...

[MsPinkMarshmallow]

I'm fed up of hearing that "high earners" will be targeted by the next budget.

The top 10% of taxpayers pay 60% of income tax.

Don't piss them off. They'll just leave the UK or work less so they're taxed less.

Some more stats: in 2024-25, the top 1% of income tax payers earned 13.3 per cent of total income and paid 28.2 per cent of income tax

35% of adults in the UK pay no tax at all

More from the Taxpayers Alliance here:

https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/briefing_share_of_income_tax_paid_by_percentile

<stands back and awaits kicking>

I’ve worked on the checkout at Tesco and I’ve worked as a senior lawyer (and various roles in between). The Tesco job was a piece of piss (and I could even do it when slightly tipsy from the night before - student days). My cleaner (who has worked stressful jobs herself) is always telling me to come clean with her when she can see that I am having a bad day. It’s nonsense to say that all jobs have the same level of stress.

If you think a neurosurgeon and barista are of equal value - do you propose they should be paid the same?

Council Tax is unfair: a two bed terrace in London might have to pay as much as a four bed detached in Morecambe.

What about taxing home space? So allowing everyone a free amount, say 400 sq feet an adult and any 100 sq feet over that allowance pays tax maybe on a rising scale.

So if two adults live in an 800 sq feet home, they don't pay council tax but f two adults live in a 1500 sq ft home, they have a free allowance of 800 sq feet and pay tax on the remaining 700 sq ft.

That would include all adults-pensioners and benefit claimants as well.

Space is a luxury and we should pay for it, especially as there is always the option of moving to something smaller.

There could be an allowance for children-maybe 200 sq feet untaxed for each child?

I'm sure I heard a Labour female politician say this but I can't be sure. I don't think I would have dreamed it up out of my own head!

Ah, here we go again—the “let’s squeeze the rich until they squeak” routine. Problem is, the squeak is already footing half the orchestra’s bill.

The top 10% of taxpayers fund 60% of income tax, and the top 1% cover nearly a third. That’s not “not paying their fair share”; that’s propping up the entire public sector. If they all went on strike tomorrow, the Treasury would collapse faster than a Victorian lady at a political rally.

But let’s be real—it’s not just the rich. Public spending keeps soaring because everyone—left, right, and center—wants more. More NHS funding, more benefits, more infrastructure, more teacher pay, more green projects, more defense, more childcare subsidies, more “free” everything... yet no one wants their own tax bill to rise.

That math doesn’t work.

The reality? The middle class will have to pay more too. Free lunches don’t exist—they’re just delayed invoices. High earners can’t keep covering the tab, especially when they can move their skills, companies, and tax bills elsewhere (and more are doing so).

If we want Scandinavian-level public services, we need Scandinavian-level tax honesty: everyone has to chip in more. It can’t just fall on the easy villains earning six figures.

Otherwise, we’ll keep complaining that “the rich aren’t paying enough” while clutching our pearls over the outrage of a National Insurance hike.

Everyone wants a generous state until the tax bill lands. At some point, we all need to decide whether we want lower taxes or higher standards — because we can’t have both forever.

That’s the thing, isn’t it — no one even agrees on who qualifies as “rich” or “middle class” these days.

It seems like the “rich” are just anyone earning more than you, and “working people” are whoever politicians want to flatter before an election.

The Labour Party keeps insisting they won’t raise taxes for “working people” — but who does that include? The nurse on £38k? The household earning £90k in London but paying £2,500 a month in rent? Or the senior manager on £120k, losing child benefit, paying higher NI, and watching frozen thresholds eat their income?

We throw around terms like middle class, upper-middle, wealthy, high earner, ultra-rich — but no one defines them. In reality:

The ultra-wealthy live in another world (family offices, offshore trusts, art collections, Swiss private schools).

The “rich” professionals are the ones the tax system can actually reach — salaried, visible, PAYE.

The middle class are squeezed to pieces — not rich enough to dodge tax, not poor enough to get help.

And the poorest will keep getting promises, because every party knows there are votes in compassion.

The result? Everyone thinks someone else should pay more — and politicians are happy to keep it vague. Because the moment they define “working people,” half their voters realise they’re the ones picking up the tab.

If we want to fund the NHS, schools, social care, defence, and climate policy, we all have to pay more. Otherwise, it’s just an endless polite argument about who gets to keep pretending they’re not part of the problem.

This Is a strange point. Both people are equally worth as much as each other on human terms. In terms of contribution to society and the scarcity of skills- one is worth more therefore paid more and so on. Its 2 totally different things - scarcity of skills determine pay and earnings (in most - not all) situations

A PhD in what? It's not about being better it's about taking responsibility for your own life and career.

People doing low paid roles need to take personal responsibility as well. They aren't magically entitled to a certain level of income. No one is.

I was about to write the same thing.

GehenSiewater is a bit mad really, because there wouldn't be neurosurgeons if they could all earn the same as baristas. And in this alternative universe there wouldn't be any coffee shops either because no one would be bothered to become an employer either at that shop or earlier in the supply chain.

Having worked in theatres, I can assure you that the neurosurgeon would be stuffed without his lower paid scrub nurse, who would in turn be stuffed without the circulating nurse, who would in turn be stuffed without the lowest paid theatres care assistant.

The whole system would grind to a halt without the Band 2 sterile services technicians and cleaners and porters.

Do you honestly think it is just the neurosurgeon that would get your child through?

NMW night not be liveable on one job. But personal can do multiple and do the gig economy etc. Might be tough etc. But they can do it for a while to build up capital and money to move on to better things

Yet those of the bottom end of the scale are demonised when they want to reduce their hours etc to prevent losing money to the Universal Credit sliding scale.

Because it's not the same thing!

But the neurosurgeon is the most skilled. It's easier to become a nurse than it is to be a doctor.

Takes a lot less skill and effort to be a cleaner.

Who is more readily replaceable? A cleaner ups and walks out, they'd be replaced lickety split.

Absolutely right. Yes, it takes 10 years to be a competent, independent surgeon. It only takes 10 minutes to realise that you don't have the right kit and you can't operate.

I'm not saying that they are equally replaceable. I'm just saying that value isn't the right way of seeing it.

That's before you realise that many of the foreign cleaners in the UK have been medical staff in their home country. They are cleaners who save lives because they are mopping the floor and realise that the man in D3 looks really quite unwell.

Anyway, you're right. In monetary terms, it's about supply and demand. But it does take a certain personality to do a very repetitive job to a continually high standard. I'd be rubbish at cleaning as a job.

How? It isn't fair. It's very blatantly unfair, but it's something that is accepted in our society as part of the 'richer' person's duty to poorer people. We euphemistically use the word 'fair' to manipulate people into paying up without too much resentment.

If we had one flat tax rate for all, then someone who earns more than most will still pay more tax than most. That is true whether it's 10% for everyone or 50% for everyone. A percentage of £200k is always going to be much, much more than the same percentage of £40k or £20k.

That, my friend, is what true fairness looks like.

You can make arguments for a second and third tier tax rate if you like, but that argument can't ever truly be about fairness. It will be about a sense of moral obligation or charity.

@OneBookTooMany I think you might have that the wrong way round - it’s the London boroughs with council tax that is lower than the rest of the country.unjustifiable given salaries and house values

This is why Rachel Reeves is looking at reducing tax relief on salary sacrifice schemes and pension perks. She wants to prevent higher earners from avoiding the tax.

She can’t stop people from reducing their hours, but I suppose that this creates more jobs if employers need to hire 2 people instead of 1.

How much extra does a teacher get paid in London? How much more do you they have to pay to get on the property ladder (including stamp duty, not just the property itself)? Do you genuinely think that the London uplift covers the extra costs and they have loads of money left over because their council tax is a bit less than yours? And I just randomly picked teaching, you could replace it with many, many different jobs.

She's a horrible chancellor

The problem is that the pay scale isn’t fair, and so the tax system needs to balance that out to some degree.

Of course people with more qualifications/expertise should be paid more, but the different between 200k and 22k is simply too large. It’s grotesque for the highest paid employee to be earning 10 times the salary of the lowest paid employees.

It didn’t used to be like this. The problem started in the 80s when the salaries of the highest paid employees started growing at a much faster rate than the salaries of lower paid employees, increasing the wealth inequality gap.

What is "fair"? We get paid with what we bring to the table. You bring less, have less sought after skills..you get paid less.

Someone earning £200k it's their money.

Someone only on £22k should suck it up and get a better job. They need to upskill and gain marketable skills to show employers. Honestly £22k is a joke, a graduate scheme starts on a couple of grand more.

I think it's fine for the top employees to earn more. Lowest paid employees should take responsibility for themselves.

Well we’ll have to disagree on that. I agree that people with more skills should be paid more, but not to that degree. There isn’t enough highly paid jobs for everyone to simply upskill and get a better paid job, and not everyone has the ability, or the financial support to do this.

Besides, if everyone had a highly paid job, then they wouldn’t be considered ‘highly paid’ would they?!

And I say this as someone who is a higher rate tax payer.

Just some figures on taxation

The top 0.1% of income earners (£500k plus) which is 65,000 people pay 25% of all income tax revenue.
The top 1% of income earners (£160k plus) which is 310k people pay 30% of all income tax revenue.
The top 10% of income earners (£70k plus) which is 3.3 m people pay 60% of all income tax revenue.
The top 25% of income earners (£45 plus) which is 9 million people pay 75% of all income tax revenue.

Now my point what you don't need many of the top 0.1% to decide to move to Dubai to make a big dent in total income tax revenue. And you don't need many of the top 10% or top 25% to decide to reduce their hours to make a big dent in total tax revenues.

Sadly the answer from the left is to increase taxes yet again to make up for this reduction in tax revenues which in turn makes more people leave or reduce their hours or just get demotivated thereby reducing productivity and the doom loop for the economy continues to spiral downwards.

But the left don't care if the poor get poorer so long as the rich don't get richer.

Increasing the National Minimum Wage without increasing import tariffs simply shifts manufacturing jobs to other countries.

The same can be said for energy costs- increasing electricity prices through green subsidies simply shifts energy intensive industries to other countries that have lower energy prices but lower environmental standards. Unfortunately CO2 emissions are a global phenomenon.

It's unhelpful hyperbole to call a salaried income of any amount "grotesque". It is earned money.
And it did used to be like this. You don't have to go back far at all and inequality was far worse. There was a brief blip in modern history where life was more affordable for the masses, but the demographic challenges and the current demands on the welfare state didn't exist. The minumum wage didnt exist, fewer people paid tax at all. Its a useless comparison.
Skills and expertise should be valuable. Your grievance should be with those who don't earn their wealth.

I have a PhD, and did work hard at school.
I'm also not stupid enough to think everyone has the same abilities or opportunities, or to realise that we need people to do the jobs you look down on.