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>

It's spreading the burden more evenly. This is commonly accepted information.

Yes, it is. You're misinformed and judgemental. Of course you won't think you are.

At this point we’re maxed out on borrowing and debt servicing so anyone left of Reeves will spike the markets.

And yes you can be all Burnham and say what markets, but that £100bn in debt servicing rocketing up eats into tax payers funds.

Like anyone who happens to have a different view to you, perhaps? 🤔

Exactly. So it's the markets, big business and media running the country not the government.

No, like anyone who is expressing a factually incorrect or prejudiced view.

I wasn't talking about the individual tax burden though. I was talking about overall tax take.

35.6% sounds a shocking number, but I suspect that's lower than previous generations. Will need to see if I can find the data.

Bullshit. Nothing ive said is factually incorrect.
You’ve asserted a lot of unsubstantiated opinion.

As I said, you won't see your own prejudice.

I'm referring to the overall tax burden, required for a functioning society.

If our tax money was enough you wouldn't need cancer charities. The NHS are far too stretched and these charities do incredible work but rely on donations.

I don't want to bask in any glory, I just want my family members to get all the help they can get from people within charities with a little knowledge on the illness

Here's an additional source of data that I think is relevant and interesting.

https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-taxes-explained/income-tax-explained

I didn't say it was enough, I said it also helps.
Your initial wording did sound like you enjoyed the glory, but of course helping charity is good.

OP would do well to consider the ills that the Tufton Street clowns are inflicting on this country. Interesting that the so called taxpayers alliance are desperate to both scream that the rich are paying too much tax on the one hand while taking private donations from the likes of Patrick Bamford on the other. These institutions are not there for your benefit but exist to paint a narrative that we must look everywhere but to the uber wealthy for taxation purposes. How vociferous were they when Mr R Sunak published the marginal rate of taxation he was paying? What marginal rates do you think the billionaires in this country pay?

Until we tackle the top of the pyramid we will never achieve a fairer taxation system. The longer you are gaslit by these clowns the less the likelihood it will ever happen.

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

Which is another way of saying: the distribution of wealth in our society is so obscenely unequal that the only place the government can get substantial enough revenue to run the state is from the top 10% of taxpayers.

Challenging the economic fundamentals and government policy choices that lead to such extreme inequality in the first place would certainly be a better solution than allowing it to snowball and then trying to claw some of the proceeds back.

I would revisit your friendship group :-) Mine are entirely the opposite. Yes it’s not ideal, everyone would love more money but can you honestly see the least privileged in society and be happy that you are taking money away from these people.

People group together with people that think the same as them. Ask most society facing high earners - see what they think. You wouldn’t stay in my friendship group spouting shite like this and in the playground I would politely move away so we will end up having differing opinions.

Let’s try high earner/poor moral bingo - I’ve spotted on this thread so far - people having too many kids, resilience, worked hard to get where I am, peoples ‘choosing to be idle.

Still to spot - ‘might as well move to Dubai’, spotted people on the way home from the pub in the food bank, many many other themes that you and your ‘friends’ trot out, lol

I know what you're referring to. But it's not what I was referring to.

The isdue is those "somes" have zero reality check. They believe £150k brings you into Ferrari ownership territory.

Yes but you can’t ignore the actual cost of debt servicing. It’s a real problem for public funding. Markets are not running the country but it’s just an outcome of over spending.

If we hadn’t borrowed so much we’d have more choices. Borrowing as much as we did is the government, and the electorate demanding it.

OK.

Nobody thinks that, but in reality that income is well above what mang folk live on and pay tax on.

@GasPanic

If you mean people with assets for example £2-£5 million then probably they don't have the wealth to make leaving the country a simple proposition.

But what about relatively high earners, in their 20's, say doctors, IT consultants, lawyers, etc., who are highly mobile and are likely to beggar off abroad at the start of their careers, so they never become "rich" in the UK, as they've based themselves somewhere else. That's a very real issue with stupidly high taxes at relatively modest income levels (i.e. £50k and £100k cliff edges).

The average UK salary is about 36k so…

If I was in Reeves shoes I would be simplifying the income tax bands, 16k personal allowance, 20% inome tax upto 50k, 40% upto 100k and 60% over 100k.

People on average salary should be on the low tax band, people above it should obviously pay more - as they are able to do so.

There should only be one minimum wage rate - the time of someone who is 17 is not worth less than someone who is 18 for example. The £12 per hour rate would be ok at present in conjunction with the increased personal allowance.

I would also align capital gains tax rates with income tax bands, ban salary sacrifice and reduce annual maximum pension contributions to 12k and remove higher rate tax relief. We should encourage older generations to pass wealth down so it can be used to stimulate the economy, not be hoarded in cash savings accounts. The maximum amount an unemployed person can pay into a personal pension should be raised to 50% of the personal allowance.

There should be no minimum threshold before employers have to pay into employee pensions, and the minimum amount employers have to pay should be doubled - we need to migrate to a sustainable joint state-personal pension provision system.

We also need lower house prices, so we need a new council tax system. Council tax should be changed to be based upon a percentage of the property’s last sale value. Stamp duty is an illogical nonsense tax due to regional differences and should be abolished.

The town centres need saving so I would abolish all business rates for retail/hospitality. I would also add new import taxes for all items - let’s start with a flat fee of £5 per item imported by a regular home address consumer, imports by registered trade businesses could be excepted - for example quantities of 144 or above of the same item.

The state pension system is stupid. It’s based on national insurance contributions but if you don’t have any and no other source of income you get effectively the same anyway but as a benefit (pension credit) - which for many people means they are better off on pension credit than if they had worked and got a state pension. Pension Credit should be abolished and anyone over the state pension age should get the same fixed amount of state pension - and I would set it as equivalent to the Personal Allowance - so no OAPs ever pay income tax on it.

National Insurance in it’s current form should be abolished - it too needs massive simplification. When it comes to the NHS, it is the single biggest financial burden on this country. In terms of economic policy for the country it is far more important and a much bigger lever than anything else - it is truly enormous. Therefore we need to replace National Insurance with a new NHS tax - I suggest starting at 2% for both employees and employers.

Capital Gains allowance should be zero.

Total individual ISA limit should be set at the Personal Allowance level.

Universal Credit should be completely abolished we should go back to only a simple uncomplicated non-working person support benefit. The current system transfers wealth from the population in general (government funds) to the very rich (employers and share holders - as companies use it to justify lower salaries). Being in work needs to pay (decent sized minimum wage) but companies should not be able to take advantage of the benefits system as they currently do en masse.

This simplification should result in sizeable reductions in staff required in government/HMRC/DWP.

Reeves is too weak and short-sighted to do what is needed.

Including national insurance (which is just another tax) I pay just under half of everything I earn in income tax. If that’s not enough then the government need to spend less.

as it is I am bringing forward my plans to finish work - I am sick of working hard and sacrificing time with my family to fund everyone else.

perhaps that makes me selfish, but I don’t really care.