Top Earners Pay a Third of all Income Tax

This government has focused on tax avoidance and have often given the impression that high earners are not paying their fair share, however, an article in the Telegraph this morning quoting HMRC's own figures, seems to suggest otherwise!

Top earners pay third of all income tax

Figures from HMRC have revealed that in 2013-14, the best-paid 1% of workers will contribute 29.8% of all income tax. To qualify for the top 1%, an individual would have to earn in excess of £160,000 a year. People who earn more than £1m a year will contribute 11.8% of all tax. In 1997, the ratio was 20%, and in 2007, before the financial crisis began, the richest 1% paid 24.4%. HMRC's figures also showed that there were are about 29m individual income taxpayers in 2010-11. Of those, about 28m pay the basic rate, while roughly 290,000 pay the top rate of tax. Harriett Baldwin, a Conservative MP, said the new figures undermined Labour's argument that the Conservatives were giving millionaires a tax cut while poorer workers suffered. She said: "These statistics will once and for all end the Labour myth of millionaire tax cuts. The 24m people who have seen their tax-free threshold increased every year are the basic rate taxpayers that are quite rightly getting a tax cut."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/tax/10368203/Top-earners-to-pay-third-of-all-income-tax-despite-rate-cut.html