Top 1% of workers pay quarter of all income tax

[Hopeless Romantic]

A quarter of all of Britain's income tax revenues this year will be paid by just one per cent of earners, according to official data.

The figure is in sharp contrast to 1978, an era associated with supertaxes, when the top one per cent paid 11 per cent of all the tax revenues.

Experts suggested the projections, published by HM Revenue and Customs, was evidence of how the rich had got richer over the last three decades, while the tax burden on them had increased substantially in recent years.

The new top rate of 50p income tax rate came into force in April 2010, landing a small number of people with the highest rate of income tax since 1988.

It is not yet fully clear how much money this top rate of tax, introduced by the former Labour government, will raise. However, last week the HMRC published its forecasts for all income tax revenues for the current tax year. It suggested that 275,000 individual, those that will pay the 50p rate, will pay £41.4 billion in tax – 25.7 per cent of the country's total income tax bill.

In total there is expected to be 30.6 million taxpayers this tax year.

more

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/tax/8321369/Top-1-of-workers-pay-quarter-of-all-income-tax.html

[Anarcho-Socialist]

1. They can hardly be called workers

[Hopeless Romantic]

4. I suppose that depends on what you define as work

A hedge fund manager earning a million £s per year probably wouldn't consider himself to be a "worker", and most people wouldn't consider him to be one either, but he still goes to work doesn't he?

Or how about a senior surgeon, earning a £150,000 in the NHS? He does valuable work, but is he a worker?

Or Wayne Rooney, reportedly on 6 million. Is what he does work?

[Nihil]

5. In answer to your questions: No/Yes/Yes/No (respectively)

i.e., the only worker that you listed was the senior surgeon.

The others are vastly over-compensated charlatans.

HTH :hi:

[Hopeless Romantic]

6. As I said, it depends on your definition

[LeftishBrit]

7. Agree!

[T_i_B]

2. And this is meant to be a bad thing?

Remind me again, what proportion of this nations wealth does the top 1% own?

[Hopeless Romantic]

3. Who said it was a bad thing?

No idea how much of the nations wealth the top 1% own, but I guess it would be similar to the tax statistic