Less than 1% of the UK population earns above £120k. It think GPs qualifier:
> for more than small minorities of the population.
covers that situation. Simply put, only a small minority of people in the UK pay that much tax.
Not to mention the classic error you’ve made
> hit 45%+ tax take.
that tax take only applies to persons income that’s above 120k. The actual total tax burden across their income is substantially lower, given everything below £120k is taxed at a much lower rate.
Actually I didn’t error. This is the total tax paid expressed as a percentage. It is not the marginal tax rate. See the link I provided as evidence (add total deductions + employers NI together).
Why would anyone do this? Employers NI is a business tax, why would consider that a tax paid by individuals?
If you’re gonna start attributing employer taxes to individuals, then why not start including business rates and other random taxes, then you can gin up any level tax burden you want.
It’s value that you created for your employer by your work and that you didn’t receive after taxation.
The fact that it was taxed above some line rather than below it doesn’t matter. (Of course that means it needs to be added to both the numerator and denominator when calculating the total tax burden, something that is often skipped.)
By that argument you might as well add VAT paid by your employers customer as well. It's a specious argument, because these amounts are not part of what you negotiate or put in your contract, and when these rates change your employer is on the hook for them, not you.
It further only tend to be included when complaining about high tax countries, and conveniently forgotten when people compare w/e.g. US taxation.
Nevertheless, even with them included, only a few European countries have total tax wedges above 50% for more than small portions of the population.
> By that argument you might as well add VAT paid by your employers customer as well.
If you make money by your labor hours directly being billed and the buyer of those hours pays VAT on that labor, then I agree.
So long as there’s a direct and 100% link between your labor and the taxed amount, it’s value you created and was taxed away, without regard to who stroked the check to the tax authorities.
Why caveat it like that? Why not include other taxes paid by the employer, all of which affect what they can afford to pay you.
It's irrelevant to me, because it's not a tax on your contracted income.
You can make an argument that it is tax.on the value you created, sure, but not on your income because for most employees there is no direct link between value created and income.
I’m talking about taxes that have a direct relationship to your income. If your income changes and the taxes paid change in proportion to your income change then that should be counted as taxed against your income.
Doesn’t matter if you call it labor, wage, salary.
You might have been talking about that, but that was not what I was talking about, nor what the person I replied to originally was talking about, and so it's not particularly relevant.
> for more than small minorities of the population.
covers that situation. Simply put, only a small minority of people in the UK pay that much tax.
Not to mention the classic error you’ve made
> hit 45%+ tax take.
that tax take only applies to persons income that’s above 120k. The actual total tax burden across their income is substantially lower, given everything below £120k is taxed at a much lower rate.