What the heck do you think ‘high earners’ spend their money on, if not assets? Wine, cigarettes and knock-off handbags? LOL
No, it goes one shares, pensions, savings, property (and previously kids’ school fees)… and yes, by the time he retires we expect to have around that much as he is in the top 0.5% of earners. We’re not far off now, after 35 years of working and saving and paying tax on the income. Those assets, that wealth, is purely derived from income from employment - no inheritance, no businesses, no playing with the stock market in our PJs. Just salaries and the homes that we’ve bought and developed.
We’ve got where we are from state schools with parents who never went to uni. We were the first. I started my life in a council flat, with a single parent mother on benefits and existing on free school dinners. But we were told at school that if you worked hard, went to uni, saved, invested in a home and a pension, it was the socially responsible thing to do to ensure you were not a drain on that society, that by paying our higher taxes we were contributing to an NHS and welfare state that protected the vulnerable. Now, we are being bludgeoned by every conceivable tax going because, for some reason, the life path we were encouraged to take makes us somehow reprehensible and not worthy of any compassion or empathy.
All of our friends, many who do have the £10m wealth you deride, are the same as us - state school educated, have worked 70-80hour weeks all their working lives, never had a penny from family or an inheritance. Just grafters who were careful with their money.
So, actually, my DH’s - anyone’s ‘high salary’ - is deeply relevant because we have ALREADY paid “a lot of tax” on it before accumulating that wealth. So, no, we don’t want to pay an additional 2% annual tax, thanks.