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>

Just wanted to get my point across 😊

Here you go @ThisRareRobinif you scroll back you can see there’s a direct question.

Sure, but a coffee shop that needs to either charge £20, or else pay their employees a non-liveable wage is a failed endeavour, and will rightly be replaced by other companies. That's capitalism.

Yes, which didn't make sense because Gehen is talking about relative levels within a company, not across companies. Maybe make your questions make sense?

I'll let you off, despite our difference of opinion. 😅

Yes I’m aware of that but bring into the real world. Give an example.

Give an example of what?

The actual preferred pay for a shelf stacker and lawyer.

Just a figure for each..

They've been asked numerous times. It's been a batista, a shelf stacker, a neurosurgeon, a lawyer... That particular response they gave was about within a company, but that wasn't really the original question being asked.

But the whole point of the idea is that this is within a company. Why would the wage a Costa Coffee barista be paid be related whatsoever to a random law firm?

It’s not a difficult to understand question.

Sell in what you’re after. I can see why it doesn’t get far.

Not you, I mean pp obvs

What are you talking about? We're clearly talking about entirely different things and this is going in circles.

Because @GehenSieweiter tells us they are of equal value to society and so should have similar pay.

But the original discussion wasn't about within a company. They have changed the parameters for some reason.

You jumped in and I answered.

It looks like asking about figures just makes people buffer.

As an FYI (completely separate to Gehen), I also support this idea.

I strictly think this should be within, not across companies.

I would likely place that someone full-time at the bottom rung of that company can be paid no less than e.g. 1/10th of the highest.

I think this would be great to incentivise work across the board. The company does better, and not only does the boss get a bonus, but the employees at the bottom also do. Similarly in the other direction; pay cuts should reasonably also be felt at the top.

I would pin this to the boss's earnings. If the boss would like to earn a salary of £300k, it scales down to £30k etc. I hope these numbers and explicitness help.

Here I am deliberately using the term "boss" and "employee" as I do not have a specific sector in mind.

Look if you work at a job that's low paid it's usually (but not always) due to the fact that it's low skilled and there's a large pool of people that can do it

I've also had a look. Margins and post tax profit margins are razor right.

I didn't say they should be paid the same actually, I said a comparable amount, meaning they are comparable when qualifications, skill levels, experience and work ethics are taken into consideration. Those at the top (in this case lawyer or regional manager) should be a comparable scale to those at the lower levels (in this case barista or junior secretary), with access to similar levels of benefits and perks, as opposed to on a completely different scale with access to completely different perks.
The lawyer being paid 2 to 3 times the secretary is much more comparable than them being paid 10 or more times more. I appreciate that this will take a change in thinking but it would lead to a fairer society.

Buffer?
Have you made up a meaning of this word?

Yes it wasn’t a trick question I’m interested in moving the conversation on to how it looks in reality.

If people have another version of what their ideal society looks like it needs to have some economic reality. What’s the price of a cup of coffee, what do risk takers do, stay or leave etc

The original question was never really a valid question, hence my attempt to bring a more realistic question. Somebody else brought in the barista versus a more highly qualified but in an entirely different field scenario. I do think that a barista deserves as much opportunity for recognition as a lawyer though - they actually work face to face with the public and probably brighten the day of a lot of fed up people. Lawyers don't always do that.

But people are still needed to fulfil these roles, and they're still of value.

It's a bit arbitrary to say the top can only earn X times more than the lower paid?

Why should a high flyer's pay be at all linked to the lower paid people who haven't managed to reach the heights of success?

The cap you'd set would be arbitrary. Better have the market set it and what employers are willing to pay for.

Also I did have a look. Post tax profit margins for the large supermarket chains are tiny. How are they gonna fund the wage increases for all their low paid jobs?

It's a lot fairer than what we have now, and the so called high flyers would be grounded without the support of ground staff anyway.

Costa made a loss as I just checked. So paying baristas more isn't gonna do them any good