Question time man top 5 percent.

[refraction]

Did anyone see the man on QT asking about tax?

Apparently he doesn't even think he is in the top 50 percent of earners.

All doctors earn more apparently and solicitors.

How out of touch with reality?

He didn't come across well and very out of touch.

being a top 1% earner who can only purchase an objectively fairly cruddy flat because you were still in uni when house prices started to decouple from local median incomes

A top 1% earner on £134k could easily afford a 4 bed period house where I live with a 45 minute commute into Kings Cross. While I completely agree there’s generational disparity this kind of hyperbole serves no useful purpose.

He is if you only count people on PAYE. I suspect he is talking about the people who aren’t on PAYE

Depends entirely whether one has the option of living in such an area or need to be located elsewhere alsohuman. It would be hyperbole if I were to suggest that all top 1% earners featuring in that age group were in that position. Obviously they aren't.

How many people are not on PAYE, genuine question? 10, 20, 30?

Many self employed people will also be low earners, they're not all celebrities or contractors on X hundred pounds a day.

% that is. I know it's more than a couple of dozen people.

It's not especially uncommon for people to be on both either.

Yes I know that, DP is often on PAYE, self employed and CIS all in the same tax year, so doing his tax return is fun.

I suppose what my real question is, is are the high earning self employed people that make Mr QT idiot feel not rich, and that he is one of I hasten to add, a significant percentage of the population? I suspect not, and many will be people like Uber drivers, childminders, cleaners and similar, who don't earn very much at all.

If you have a business, freelance etc you will not be PAYE also those with private wealth: landowners, Inherited wealth etc . QT man’s point is if it’s a lot easier for HMRC to get tax from those on PAYE. Therefore if Labour fails to get tax from businesses to pay for its spending then they will get it from the top 5% of those on PAYE

Someone earning £80k can get a mortgage of about £300k if they’re lucky. A nice amount in most areas of the country but hardly extravagant and not what you’d expect of a 5%er.

Many self employed people will also be low earners, they're not all celebrities or contractors on X hundred pounds a day.

More than 2 million self employed people in the U.K. make less than minimum wage.

A person on 80k and just into the top 5% is a lot closer in spending copacity to a person on 25k than a top 1% earner who can genuinely afford all the tax avoidance. The graphs are exponential in the top end. Yes, 80k is a good salary, but those earning this range are not the problem. It is the truly wealthy who do not pay their share who should be villified.

Someone earning £80k can get a mortgage of about £300k if they’re lucky

£360k actually without any luck involved. That would cost around 26% of their net salary. So, with a 10% deposit, a £400k house. A very nice house where I live with a decent commute.

Capacity. Thanks phone.

*Someone earning £80k can get a mortgage of about £300k if they’re lucky

£360k actually without any luck involved.*

4.5 times salary! Is it really possible to borrow that? I thought times salary was the usual max.

Worrying about whether you can buy a 200 or 300 k house makes you a top earner. It’s not the kind of thing the vast majority of people on the average income are worrying about.

It makes me feel pretty happy that I can afford to have the heating on at a reasonable level in December. That is a normal person goal. I would be thrilled if I could get a mortgage on a 100 k house.

Pretending that living in a 4 bed house, being able to afford to commute long distance by train, having multiple holidays a year and living in a catchment for a nice school equate to how the average person lives is not realistic. It shows people don’t understand what austerity has done to the standard of living of ordinary people.

Nat West will lend 4.5 times. And I completely agree @Endofthedays.

What @JacobReesClunge said. The "richest" people in my area of London have likely never earned over 40k but have levels of wealth younger generations could never hope to achieve even on high salaries. I know people who have made 1m plus profit in a few yrs simply from selling a house.

This is from August but still pertinent

“ Nurses can go on TV and beg politicians for a pay rise, and teachers can crash out of their profession under too much pressure. But up among the ranks of the top earners there is no such stress: research last month from Essex University showed that the share of UK income going to the top 0.1% is now at its second-highest in history, not far off where it was at the time of the great banking crash. While the rest of us enter our second lost decade of wage growth, those right at the top enjoy bounties. .... researchers at the IMF [ , who] found that the more money goes to the rich in any country, the slower an economy grows. They concluded: “The benefits do not trickle down. In contrast, an increase in the income share of the poor is associated with higher GDP growth.” “

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/06/britain-super-rich-wealthy

“ To join their ranks [top 0.1% of UK earners], numbering just 31,000, you’d need a taxable income of at least £650,000 a year – £12,500 per week. In less than a fortnight, you would easily pull in more than the average Briton makes as taxable income over a whole year “

In contrast, an increase in the income share of the poor is associated with higher GDP growth.

I know economics is more complex than this, but that actually makes perfect sense to me. If millions of people had a bit more income they might be buying luxuries that they can't currently afford, so local businesses like cafés and beauty salons and gyms would have more potential customers. Whereas if one person has all that wealth to themselves they've only got one body so there is a limit to how many times they can go for a coffee or have a massage or join a gym.

I have only studied the very basics of economics though, so I'm sure there is probably a huge gap in my logic somewhere...

The incentive is the fact that earning more always means you have higher take home pay

This is not true if you have to pay for childcare which is not deductible for tax purposes in order to work.

If that’s the case you can quite easily make a cash loss by working and that becomes worse when you pay tax at higher tax rates.

We should all on mumsnet think critically about this point because it affects women disproportionately.

He’s a thick shit. Turns out he isn’t in the top 5% though. He’s in the top 3%...
And the greedy plant brought his mum along for support. How pathetic.

@lovemylot1, childcare is a choice. And it’s a factor for a very few years which should fall equally on both parents. It’s disingenuous to include it.

Lower earners also need to pay for childcare, which is likely to take up a far bigger proportion of their income, and it's not necessarily the case that higher earners have to spend more on childcare, just that sometimes they choose a more expensive option like a nanny or nursery that's more expensive for whatever reason.

Lower earners simply won't be able to make that choice - they'll have to make it work within what they can afford and it's not necessarily going to be cheap or easy - eg shift workers like nurses or other healthcare/emergency services workers.

Some low earners are entitled to help with childcare though from the age of 2