How 3,000 top taxpayers pay as much as bottom 9m
A FEW thousand of Britain’s top earners contribute more to the taxman than the bottom nine million, official figures revealed yesterday.
The top 3,000 income tax payers will between them provide around 4.2 per cent of the total government revenue from income tax in this financial year.
That compares to less than four per cent from the lowest- earning nine million workers.
Each of the top 3,000 earners declares an income above £2.7million, the figures from HM Revenue and Customs show. Some 30million people pay income tax – meaning the contribution from the top 3,000 is the same as the total from around a third of the lowest earners.
The figures were released by HMRC to the journalist Fraser Nelson under
‘The rich pay more than under Labour’
the Freedom of Information Act as part of his investigation into wealth inequality in Britain. They form part of a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary entitled How The Rich Get Richer, which is broadcast tonight.
The Tories said the revelations undermined Labour leader Ed Miliband’s claim that Britain was now a ‘zero-zero’ country where the richest pay zero tax and the poorest work on zero hours contracts. They pointed out the Government had increased the tax threshold for low earners so many more pay no tax at all.
A Treasury source said: ‘The rich pay more under this Government than under Labour. The people who pay zero tax are the millions of low earners who have been taken out of paying income tax altogether due to Chancellor George Osborne increasing the tax-free personal allowance.
‘This is yet more evidence that because he has no economic plan, Ed Miliband is not up to the job.’
A Labour source said Mr Miliband was talking about the few people and corporations who avoid paying tax. The source said: ‘These figures relate to income tax only, not other taxes like VAT which are less progressive. They also reflect how a few at the very top earn many times more than ordinary working people.
‘The fact is the Tories have given the top 1 per cent of earners a £3billion-a-year income tax cut, while ordinary families are paying more in higher VAT.’
Mr Nelson, editor of The Spectator, said that last year the richest were ‘shouldering a greater share of the burden than at any time in history’.
He added: ‘This was achieved after the top rate of income tax was reduced from 50p to 45p in April 2013. It is now harder than ever for Ed Miliband to justify bringing back the 50p tax.’
The figures show the top 3,000 taxpayers earn around 1.4 per cent of all the income received in the UK but pay three times that proportion of the income tax receipts.
Last year some £154billion was collected in income tax. The statistics show the top 30,000 earners collect around five per cent of all pay but account for more than 11 per cent of the income tax take.
Research commissioned for the Centre for Social Justice as part of the programme compared the 1million people living in the richest and poorest neighbourhoods in Britain.
It found the million poorest were 12 times more likely to be victims of violent crime, and three times more likely to live in fatherless households.
Children attending state schools in the most deprived areas were three times more likely to fail to get five GCSE grades at A to C level compared with the richest.