The IFS is very good on this

User Posted Link

“The tax and benefit system is progressive overall. Before taxes and benefits, the highest-income fifth of individuals have an average household income that is 12 times as high as the poorest fifth. Adding all cash benefits and deducting the main direct personal taxes (income tax, employee and employer NICs and council tax) brings this figure down to 5. Benefits account for around 80% of this reduction, while direct taxes account for 20%. Indirect taxes (VAT and excise duties) take up a roughly constant fraction of household budgets across the income distribution, on average.

“The top 1% of the adult population now pays well over a third of all income tax. Only 58% of adults are liable for income tax at all. And the top 1% even of those who do pay income tax have seen their share of total income tax payments rise from 25% to 30% since 2010 as policy reforms, particularly under the coalition, increased income tax for the best off while reducing it for those on more typical incomes.”

Lots of interesting international comparisons too. “ If the UK were to adopt the income tax and SSC rates of one of our higher-tax European neighbours, it might raise slightly more from the highest earners. But the big difference would be in the tax levied on the earnings of average workers. The average tax rate on median full-time earnings in the UK was 28% in 2016–17. This is much lower than it would be under the tax systems of the other countries shown in Figure 5, for which the average is 44%. Since 2016–17 (the year for which this analysis was undertaken), the income tax personal allowance has been increased more quickly than inflation, which will have further reduced income tax payments at the median in the UK.”

This is what annoys me about people who think they’re saintly for voting Labour. They want a bigger and better state (like in Europe) - but they want someone else to pay for it. Would they still vote for a European sized state sector if they had to pay 44% instead of 28%? I doubt it. Easy to be altruistic with other people’s money.

Posted By: Old Git on December 12th 2019 at 12:25:43

Message Thread

Reply to Message

In order to add a post to the WotB Message Board you must be a registered WotB user.

If you are not yet registered then please visit the registration page. You should ensure that their browser is setup to accept cookies.

Log in