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 do, don't be so patronising.

thats not true . Everyone pays VAT including tax on electricity. Council tax fuel tax vehicle licence duty. Etc

It's just that you seem not to.
Of course the wealthiest need to pay more, that's not a new concept.

What, someone earning £67k is "enormously wealthy" - I don't agree.

I disagree, clearly.

If that’s the case, I think OP’s argument that people on that salary are all free to easily leave the country doesn’t quite stand up.

I’m not saying you can’t argue against those tax rises btw. Just that you need a different argument.

It's well above average, is it not?

I do not think it is just the “rich” looking at options in other countries now. I think it includes a lot of more middle income young people and that is a terrible prospect for us as a country long term, especially with an ageing demographic .

And a lot of exit taxes would affect dual nationals who can easily hand in their British passport and many will and are far less attached to it than Reeves seems to think.

“It’s not fair” lol. For god sake OP grow up. It’s not fair —- wah wah wah wah. (I’ve been a higher tax payer for about 15 years)

If you understood how taxation has always worked then you wouldn't be surprised that wealthier people contribute more.

We know, as there is plenty of data, that people are incentivised to change their behaviour because of these policies.

There is for example a huge spike in number of tax payers earning just under £100k… as people take action to avoid the threshold.

You assume people just keep working as normal and paying it - they don’t. They find ways to avoid it. Some people will work part time, but the most common option is to use salary sacrifice to put money in pensions - saving the worker money, and giving them access to certain benefits (if that’s part of the problem).

In my example of me, if I salary sacrifice my £50k into a pension, the government lose ~£26k in tax, and £22k in childcare help which they then have to pay me. It would be insane to not do this - the government lose money as a result.

You misunderstand the size of the incentives, the value of people’s time - and their ability to change their behaviour to maximise their personal position.

These are the same people who like to bash anyone on benefits, yet there they are, playing the system.

Yes but people often don’t earn e.g. 10 m/year their whole career. It is often concentrated over the peak period years or may be concentrated over a period as people inevitably burn out (or get pushed out) of certain v high paid jobs.

If that is the case, no they aren’t going to agree to give the government 60% of their money. For someone earning £10m / year, why would they be left with 4m if they could move elsewhere and be left with £6m or £7m (based on a more reasonable tax rate elsewhere) to give an example

Well, yes, don't piss them off. They'll leave the country, be subject to an exit tax and then what? We want more jobs, not less. Being happy about rich people leaving the country while AI is automating massive portions of the labour market is about as dumb as it gets tbh.

Of course it's above average, it's the top 10%, but £67k is a fairly normal salary in mid-level management and professional careers. It's the people earning in the top 1-2% that really skew the figures. Those at the lower end of the top 10% are not living lavish lifestyles in this day and age.

I don’t think you can possibly know what these people as a homogeneous mass think about ‘people on benefits’.

Given they will be contributors and be paying in for far more than they take out, to then use the legal government mechanisms to optimise their income doesn’t seem unreasonable. Particularly given in this scenario they are exclusively doing it because of the governments tax and benefits policies.

Do you really think anyone is going to accept losing tens of thousands of pounds for eating £10 over £100k, and just not do anything about it? Why would they do that - they are quite significantly financially worse off by earning more.

An example for someone with two kids in London pieced nurseries:

• £99k after tax and benefits inc childcare help = £87,557 net
• £101k after tax and benefits without childcare help = £66,107 net

Why would anyone just accept that…?

It goes even further than that: if you have to buy fuel for your vehicle, the fuel tax is added to the actual cost of the petrol/diesel and then VAT is added on to that new subtotal - so you're actually paying tax on paying tax.

Not to mention the E10 scheme that was slipped in largely under the radar a few years back, meaning that petrol is now less efficient than it used to be - by law - so you have to pay more for the same amount of useful petrol.

If one of the big supermarkets were found to be watering their milk down by 5-10%, so customers got less milk for their money, the government would stamp down hard on them; but when the government do the equivalent themselves, hey it's just cute.

I forgot to mention the increase in the minimum wage. That's going to force small businesses to shut.

Oh well. Who needs the little guys when you can buy mass-produced tat from China? (Shein, Temu etc)

It’s not a leak. It’s people speculating. But many countries do do that successfully.

I'm basing it on comments read on MN.
I'm not saying that what they're doing is wrong, more that they cannot really judge others. We're all ultimately selfish.

Sure but that’s not what the PP implied. They seem to think the ‘top 10%’ are all immensely wealthy when the reality is a number are really quite normal middle earners.
And of course it is always that cliff edge that means they’re the ones who suffer the most from tax policy targeting a particular percentage of taxpayers as they don’t have alternatives I suppose - unlike the very wealthy at the other end of the 10%.

Nobody said they were living lavish lifestyles.

Lol-ing at “they will just leave” not everyone in the top 10% are powerfully free, rich individuals. I’m in the top 10% and whilst I am not pleading poverty by any stretch, I’m not an F1 driver who can just swan off to Monaco.

I agree that people avoid it by paying into pensions.

But for me that option should be closed. Higher rate taxpayers should not be able to get that relief, it's far too generous and is resulting in some people getting huge pension pots they don't actually need while the country as a whole is racking up massive debts.

And someone paying into a pension pot is clearly disposable income as they are choosing to pay it into the pot to avoid the tax, if they were relying on the money for day to day living they wouldn't be able to do that.

I think there should probably be tax relief at the 20 odd % rate only.

I don't think there should be any taxation cliff edges though. The system should be reformed so they are removed.

You don't need to resort to insults. I've been a higher rate tax payer for much much longer than that.