On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 11:43:27 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

On 13/06/2018 11:30, Recliner wrote:

I realise that you're not, and never will be, a high earner, so you can be
excused for not knowing that some people in Britain have marginal tax rates
of more than 20%. In fact, the top UK tax rate is 45%, plus 2% employees’
primary class 1 rate above upper earnings limit, so effectively 47%.

Then again, at the bottom end, if you take withdrawal of benefits into
account, some people have an effective tax rate in excess of 100%. I
know one person who, if they work 20 hours a week instead of 16, is less
well off in spite of working more, as they lose some in work benefits.

Yes, there are strange bumps in the marginal tax rate curve, and there
are indeed short stretches where the marginal rate can be very high
indeed, even over 100%. The idea of universal credit was to prevent
these anomalies for low earners.

There are also accidental bumps in the marginal tax rate as people
climb the scale; see:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/01/number-high-earners-caught-60pc-tax-trap-set-double/

However, the 47% marginal rate is deliberate and applies over the
whole range for very high earners.