Getting vilified as a high earner

[MagicMondays]

DH and I are both high earners. We do highly skilled and quite niche professional jobs which involved most of our 20s spent grafting, living apart, anti social hours etc when our friends were all having more fun! Both jobs still demand long hours and have a lot of responsibility. We have two DC and it's a struggle to sort childcare that works and make sure one of us is around for them. Our mortgage is huge (cos London) on a run of the mill Victorian terrace.
We obviously get no allowances - no personal allowances on income tax, no 30 hours childcare, no child benefit etc. Our tax bill is huge.
No issue with any of that. High earners should pay a disproportionate amount into the system to support others/redistribute wealth etc.

What I can't get my head around is how much people in the UK seem to dislike people like me. I see it on these boards all the time. People demanding I pay more tax, people complaining high earners are not as deserving as nurses, teachers etc, my own family making unfavourable comparisons with others.
We don't live a flash lifestyle at all - ordinary clothes, old car, not really interested in grand holidays, posh restaurants etc. You wouldn't know other than from knowing the jobs we do that we must have a good income.

I'm just a bit tired of this idea that people like me are arseholes in some way. I'm really not!

But this isn't even possible is it? I appreciate you might well have list your tax free allowance or have pushed into 45% but this wouldn't equate to a pay cut? You're just paying a lot more tax on the proportion of your income above the 20% then 40% threshold no?

No they don't. You lose it after a certain income level... think you lose £1 of allowance every £1 you earn over £100k or something similar

Aha! Clearly I work with @Densol57!

Not really that luxurious because they sound like they live in London and about 50% of that goes in tax!

Definitely a 1st world problem here, with a sprinkle of arrogance.

It's great that you and your partner have both worked hard, but so have many other people. You're just different because you found a job/industry that pays well.

You mentioned you come from a poor background, so surely you can see the privilege you have due to being a high earner then?

Stop moaning. Six figures, dual income and house in London is a good life. Bloody hell.

High earners often assume they work much harder than low paid people.

We live in a society that wants to think of itself as a just meritocracy, but it's really not.

....But with 10% inflation on top it's strained our finances.

OP you're just taking the piss. Try being disabled, bed bound and surviving on benefits. After rent and energy bill, left with less than £200 to cover everything else, including specialist diet and care at £20ph.

I worked bloody hard for a lot of years, was a high earner, paid a fortune in tax. And just felt very, very grateful I was able to do so.

If you feel vilified, it's probably because you rub peoples' noses in it.

Do you think the OP is reading @Jonnywishbone posts and thinking “At last! I have found my people!” 🤔

Count your blessings and move on OP. Who cares what other people think?

Im self-employed, a finance professional and a high earner. Some people seem to think I pay no tax because I know the ‘loopholes’. Nope, I’m an honest person and totally accept I should pay a lot of tax. It’s just a fact of life.

Exactly this.

It's not the money, it's the attitude that goes with it much of the time, the whole 'work(ed) hard and sacrifice (d)' clap trap.
Have a low income and struggling? Move house! Stop the luxuries! (that you probably don't have anyway) Take a 2nd/3rd job! What do you expect in a job like that? Why do you think you deserve enough to live on? Get a better job! Retrain! Work harder! Have aspirations! Make better choices! (While simultaneously moaning about shit services and customer service in companies because no one wants to do those jobs for the money on offer and the way they're degraded....)

Have an above average income and struggling? Well it's just all not fair and you should be able to afford whatever you want because you work hard and you shouldn't have to do without anything. Couldn't possibly cut back on anything and of course it's never down to choices, I often seen "Well...... London" in answer to the reasons people have chosen to have a massive mortgage - where do they think all the care assistants, waitresses and shop assistants that work in London and serve them live? Under a bridge? They likely don't even earn what some people's mortgage payment is, or what they pay in tax, yet still manage.

The rules appear to be different when you're struggling depending on what you earn and that's why there's bad feeling.

The problem is, the UK is a great place to live for the truly wealthy - private schools, private healthcare, enormous properties, plenty of specialists to advise you you how to invest and hide your money from the taxman, and to turn a blind eye to your money laundering activities and taste for football clubs. It’s just not so great for the majority of people who live here any more - the little people who work for a salary, even, apparently, those on a really big salary.

Why is having a lot of money or success something that needs to be celebrated though?

It's a serious question.

Why is it important that less wealthy or successful people should celebrate your wealth or success? Isn't your wealth or success the reward in itself? Why do you need more reward? Doesn't the fact that you are wealthy and/or successful indicate that people already want to celebrate your achievements? Why do you need even more people to celebrate it?

It's really not! I know so many high earners who have left in the last 3 years!

@Jonnywishbone has a point. Some will leave in a big way, others leave insmaller ways via early retirement or reducing hours. As someone who freelances, I definitely work less than I could (and therefore contribute less than I could) because at a certain point taking on additional work brings in relatively little economic benefit. Think of it as being asked to work overtime at 60% of your normal rate.

people complain about the top 1%, but really it is the .01% that hold the wealth. If you are reliant on investment returns than income, that is a different category, and one that faces disproportionately lower taxes.

focusing on other workers who have more (rather than entrenched generational wealth) is just a form of tall poppy syndrome

no personal allowances on income tax

What? Do you understand how income tax works? Everyone, even the high earners, gets a personal allowance. You only pay tax on income over that amount. And if your raise room you into the next bracket (I’m assuming you are saying you went into the £125,140+ and it caused a loss because of the increased tax, then it wasn’t a raise worth having in the first place. You only pay an additional 5% on any amount over £125,140. Not your entire income. So an extra 50 quid in tax for every thousand of your raise over that amount.

Aw somebody wanted us all to know she's a high earner.

i think YABU. Everyone knows how much mners hate rich people

I don’t think you can compare someone on 150k to the prime minister’s wife who is a millionnaire many times over. Most high earners are salaried employees who pay PAYE tax and have very little opportunity to squirrel their money away in offshore accounts. So that’s really not The Big Issue. The Big Issue is that most people take out more from the statem than they pay in, and that is not sustainable in the long term. You can’t just keep taxing “high earners”, who are not Rishi-Sunaks-wife rich by any means.

It's also nonsense, I literally went home to my mum's in the council estate I grew up in in northern Ireland in a vintage sports car in my 20s, neighbours cane in to see it, we're delighted for me, kids had a sit in the back seat, full 'local girl doing well' excitement.

News flash time...

honestly no one cares how much you earn it's strange you think they do.

Higher your pay doesn't mean the harder you work. A quick example I'm sure single parents, working 2-3 jobs, putting a roof over their kids heads, sacrificing social life and luxuries for themselves for their kids and still gets up every morning being the best resign of themselves despite having the bare minimum doesn't work any less hard than you or anyone doing there best for that matter

Good for you earning well and you should be proud but as I said no one cares

@Vinniepolis

Yes.

The big issue is that most people don't earn enough because the top 10% earn too much.

Which we try to fix by taxation which is obviously not working

Massively increasing lower wages and linking wages would be much more effective

People demanding I pay more tax, people complaining high earners are not as deserving as nurses, teachers etc, my own family making unfavourable comparisons with others.

Perhaps you have a skewed idea of what the word “vilified” means. Expecting those with the most money to cut back to ensure nobody starves or freezes to death isn’t vilifying anyone. Insisting that saving lives or educating the next generation are more worthwhile jobs than most high-paid careers isn’t vilifying anyone either.

Working and middle class people in this country have been told for over a decade that they need to endure “austerity” for the good of the country. They’ve accepted declining standards of living, to the point where many are now unable to feed their families or heat their (rented) homes. Now no more can be squeezed from them, you feel vilified because you’re expected to make some cutbacks in order to contribute a bit more?!

In a nutshell for sure.

I genuinely don't think people have an issue with people who've done well for themselves. I've never noticed any animosity.

But people do rightly have an issue with BS attitudes and 'woe is me'.

My partner earns over £100k and I earn £70k.. so we’re both fairly high earners (and youngish, only 31) but I’ve never encountered the “hate” you speak of…

What do you do? Could it be more to do with your profession? My partner is an intellectual property solicitor and I work in a senior role in media - neither of us get much criticism from others, most people we meet are quite interested in our jobs.