Higher rate tax payer

Aretnap

crv1963 said:

I think with the fiscal drag through freezing the personal tax allowance this will become more common. My mother gets state pension and at 85 years has been sent her first ever tax bill. Although a small amount it worried her as she doesn't use the internet so she thought she'd be sent to prison for none payment and worried unnecessarily for a few hours until she called me!

Indeed. Without getting too political, freezing tax thresholds disproportionately affects people who end up slightly over the threshold relative to people who are well over the threshold. So arguably it would be much fairer to keep increasing the thresholds but raise the higher rate of tax itself by a couple of percentage points.

But apparently raising tax rates is the Worst Thing That Governments Can Do, whereas freezing thresholds apparently doesn't count as raising tax rates. So successive governments have naturally gone down the latter route when money is needed, leaving us where we are now.

In any event as mentioned, even in Scotland paying higher rate tax still puts you well above the income of the average worker, let alone the average pensioner, so it still very much falls into the category of "nice problems to have".

pterri

MetaPhysical said:

I agree with the OP.  It is disgusting.  Higher rate tax was at one point meant for wealthy, high earning people.  £50k when taxes have come off is the equivalent net income of about £3400 per month assuming no NI.  OK, not bad but hardly a king's ransom.

People need to wise up, if we want better public services, including a universal state pension, then those in the range of  ‘normal’ earnings will need to pay more tax. The 1% will not do it. Every country on earth is is struggling with great non working older people being looked after a smaller cohort of young  people who can barely make rent. The UK is not as bad as some actually, Italy is stuffed and France will it confront its retirement age. I’ll be in the higher bracket, happy? Of course not but the maths don’t lie. Any gov, whatever its stripe, will have to deal with this. And let’s not start on social care…. I hope I’m in a box before that happens. 

newatc

When I retired over 20 years ago (quite early), I never thought I would ever being paying at the higher tax rate. But with decent rises in private (DB) pension and state pension, I'm pretty sure I will end up paying tax at the higher rate this tax year. It's a surprise but I understand I'm lucky. The only thing I find a little irritating is that my wife has only her state pension and if you think of our joint income, it is hardly higher tax territory but still not complaining.