The base
Britain’s income tax rests on a very small number of shoulders
A remarkably thin slice of people pays most of the income tax in the UK. That makes the system steeply progressive — and it makes the public finances unusually sensitive to the choices of a few hundred thousand people. Both things are true at once.
“The rich should pay more” and “the rich already pay most of it” are usually treated as opposing slogans. They are, in fact, both descriptions of the same arithmetic. The UK collects the great majority of its income tax from a small fraction of taxpayers, and that fraction has been getting smaller, not larger. This piece sets out the numbers plainly and leaves the conclusions to you.
Of the roughly 34.5 millionpeople who paid income tax in 2022–23, the highest-earning 1% paid 28.5% of the entire income tax bill. The top 10% paid 60.3%. The lower-earning half of all taxpayers — some seventeen million people — paid under a tenth of it between them.
Paid by the top 1%
28.5%
of all UK income tax
Paid by the top 10%
60.3%
three in ten pounds, from one in ten people
Paid by additional-rate filers
≈38%
from just ≈3% of all taxpayers
Paid by the bottom 50%
<10%
half of every taxpayer, combined
Who actually pays the income tax
The same four bands of taxpayers, two ways. The upper bar is each band’s share of all income tax paid; the lower bar is its approximate share of total pre-tax income. Where the tax segment is wider than the income segment, that band pays in more than its share of income. Select a band to trace it across both.
Income tax shares are HMRC outturn figures for 2022–23, individual taxpayers. Income shares are approximate published estimates (the top 1% receive roughly 13% of income, the top 10% roughly 35%); the split between the lower two bands is illustrative. The two columns are on the same definition of income tax, and each sums to 100%.
The narrow end is getting narrower
Concentration at the top is not a fixed feature of the system; it has been increasing. The share of income tax paid by the top 1% rose from around 21% in 1999–2000 to 28.5% in 2022–23. Over the same period the very top of the distribution came to carry more of the load, not less.
The additional rate — 45% on income over £125,140 — illustrates how thin the top really is. In 2022–23 about 570,000 people paid it: roughly 1.7% of taxpayers. With income tax thresholds frozen, that group is projected to reach about 1.23 million — near 3.1% of taxpayers — by 2025–26, and it pays close to 38% of the whole income tax take. Three per cent of the people; more than a third of the money.
One honest wrinkle. The top 1% share is projected to dip slightly over the next couple of years, from 28.5% towards 26.6% by 2025–26. That is not because high earners are paying less. It is because the same frozen thresholds are dragging millions of lower-income people into paying income tax for the first time, which enlarges the base and dilutes any one slice of it. The number of income taxpayers is expected to climb from 34.5 million towards 39.1 million. Concentration measured at the very top eases a little; the underlying dependence on high earners does not.
The top 1%’s share of income tax, over time
Two decades of rising concentration, then a slight projected dip as frozen thresholds pull millions of new taxpayers into the base. HMRC outturn and projection.
The top 1% carried 21.3% of the income tax bill at the turn of the century and 28.5% by 2022–23. The projected easing to 26.6% isn’t high earners paying less — it’s the base widening beneath them. HMRC Income Tax liabilities statistics.
Is this uniquely British? Not quite — the one advanced economy that leans even harder on its top earners is the United States, where the top 1% pay about 45.8% of federal income tax and the top 10% about 75.8% (2021), though American states levy their own taxes on top. Reliable, recent, like-for-like figures for the big European economies are surprisingly hard to obtain — which is itself part of the story: this is a feature of the English-speaking systems in particular, and the UK sits firmly among them.
Progressive and fragile are the same fact
A tax base this concentrated is, by definition, steeply progressive: those with the most pay much the most. It is also, by the same arithmetic, exposed. When a very large share of revenue rests on a very small group — one that is internationally mobile, able to change when and how it takes income, and free to leave — a modest number of departures or behavioural shifts at the top moves the receipts more than a large change lower down ever could. Nothing here says that group pays too much or too little. It says the finances lean heavily on a few hundred thousand decisions, and that is worth seeing clearly whichever conclusion you draw.
How these figures are put together
Two different datasets appear on this page, and they measure different things. The split-bar and the headline shares come from HMRC’s Income Tax liabilities statistics (2022–23 outturn, with projections to 2025–26). Those figures are income tax only, measured on individual taxpayers, for the UK. Tax shares are reproduced exactly; the income shares shown alongside them are approximate published estimates used to illustrate how far tax share runs ahead of income share at the top, with the split between the lower two bands drawn illustratively.
The time-trend uses the same HMRC series, at the three anchor points we can stand behind — the turn-of-century figure, the latest outturn, and HMRC’s own projection. The single international comparator is the United States, from IRS Statistics of Income (2021): federal income tax only, individual filers, so it sits on roughly the same footing as the HMRC “income tax only, individuals” basis (US states add their own taxes). We deliberately left out the big European economies: the widely-quoted cross-country table is OECD data from around 2005, measured on households and including social contributions — too old and too differently defined to place honestly beside the current UK figures. Where we couldn’t get a reliable, like-for-like number, we left it out rather than dress up an old one.
None of the numbers on this page are produced by Kept’s tax engine. They are published statistics, reproduced with their sources listed below.
This is the free, general version. Kept does it on your actual numbers.
The calculators here use typical figures. The Kept dashboard rebuilds your real household — income, company, pensions, savings — finds the reliefs the tax code already lets you claim, and forecasts what they keep over 20 years.
See your own positionSources
- HMRC, Income Tax liabilities statistics: tax year 2022 to 2023 to tax year 2025 to 2026 (shares of income tax by percentile; additional-rate taxpayer counts; total taxpayer numbers). gov.uk
- House of Commons Library, Income tax: briefing (long-run trend in the top 1% share). commonslibrary.parliament.uk
- IRS, Statistics of Income (2021) — share of federal income tax paid by the top 1% and top 10% of individual filers; as summarised by the Tax Foundation. taxfoundation.org