The Top 1% Now Pay 30% Of All Income Tax
NOW, you might say that the top 1% get more than 30% of the income so therefore they should be paying more in tax than this. But that isn’t actually true:
Britain’s top one per cent are now paying almost 30 per cent of all income tax – despite only earning 10 per cent of all income.
Whatever else you want to say about the UK’s income tax system there’s no doubt that it is highly progressive. The rich are indeed paying more than their share of it with regard to their share of the income and this is the definition of progressive.
And what’s much more interesting is that they’re paying this larger portion of the tax take even while tax rates are much lower than they used to be:
The top one per cent of earners in 1979 paid just 11 per cent of the nation’s income tax – despite the highest rate of income tax being set at 83 per cent.
And even more interestingly that tax take from that top 1% has been rising even during the time of this current Coalition government. Yup, elect the Tories so as to tax the rich more, who would have thought it?
But such political snark aside, it really is true that we’re now squeezing a great deal more out of the rich than we ever used to when the top income tax rate was 83%. Which leaves us with a question: what is it that we’re trying to do with the tax system? Tax the rich of get as much money as we can to spend on the poor? The answer to that will lead to the tax system itself. We can have very high tax rates and less money to play with or leave the stinking rich with half their loot and have more money to play with.
So, which do you want?
Posted: 19th, November 2013 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
