Two thirds of UK tax comes from higher rate taxpayers

Higher rate taxpayers will now make up 67% of the British tax bill although they only make up 16% of the UK population.

This compares to 58% in 2011/2012 and the difference in actual tax paid: £91.9 billion then compared to a massive £172 billion now. Over 1 million extra people now are subject to the 40p and 45p income tax rates and the fact of the matter is that not all higher rate tax payers are rich people! There are a lot of middle earners who fall into higher rate tax. Statistics show that the top 1% of taxpayers earn 12.6% of the UK income, contributing 27.4% of total tax. The top 5% earn 25.1% of income, contributing a huge 47.7% of total tax. In short these figures represent an in balance and measures are being considered to find ways to take people out of the 40p rate who shouldn’t be penalized by a rich person’s tax rate.