MBA Research: Have tax thresholds or benefit limits ever caught you out?

MBAstudent

Hi all

I'm currently undertaking an MBA at Hult Ashridge and researching how UK professionals and families make financial decisions as their income grows.

One topic that keeps coming up is the impact of various income-related tax rules, allowances and benefit limits. While most people expect to pay more tax as their earnings increase, I'm interested in understanding whether people have experienced unexpected consequences such as:

• Loss or reduction of benefits
• Higher effective tax rates than expected
• Changes to childcare eligibility
• Reductions in allowances
• Tax bills or charges they weren't anticipating
• The need to make specific pension or financial planning decisions.

I'd be interested in hearing about any experiences members have had with these issues and whether you felt you had access to good information at the time.

As part of the research, I've also put together a short anonymous survey which takes around five minutes to complete:

https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/icr/household-finance-and-career-progression

The survey is anonymous. No names, contact details, employer names or exact salary information are collected, and responses will only be analysed in aggregate as part of the research project.

I'm very happy to return to the forum and share a summary of the findings once the project is complete if that would be of interest.

Many thanks for any thoughts or survey responses!

SiliconChip

Posted on the wrong board, reported to be moved.

silvercar

I’ll move it to the survey board.

kimwp

Interesting wording-

some UK income ranges can result in disproportionately high effective tax rates due to the interaction of tax allowances and benefit rules?

I do think there should be more tapering though.