{"id":25130,"date":"2014-06-16T10:28:12","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T09:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=25130"},"modified":"2014-06-16T10:23:23","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T09:23:23","slug":"the-equality-trust-the-uk-does-not-have-a-progressive-tax-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/06\/16\/the-equality-trust-the-uk-does-not-have-a-progressive-tax-system\/","title":{"rendered":"The Equality Trust &#8211; the UK does not have a progressive tax system"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <em>I received the following in a mail from the Equality Trust this morning and as I am short of time offer it as is:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);\">I just wanted to draw people&#39;s attention to a new report we&#39;ve published today with Ipsos MORI polling, covered in the Guardian <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/money\/2014\/jun\/16\/british-public-wrong-rich-poor-tax-research\">here<\/a>. It looks at the at how much the richest and poorest households pay in tax, what people believe they pay, and what they would like them to pay. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);\"><br \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p><div class=\"im\"><span style=\"-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);\">Our report&#39;s main findings are:<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"im\"><span style=\"-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);\"><br \/><\/span><\/p>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px;\"><span style=\"-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);\">The poorest 10 per cent of households <strong>pay 8 percentage points more (or about 23% more) <\/strong>of their income in all taxes than the richest 10 per cent - 43% compared to 35%<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px;\"><span style=\"-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);\">But the public is unaware of this according to new Ipsos Mori polling. Nearly<strong> 70% (68%) think the richest 10 per cent pay more<\/strong>. Not a single respondent knew how much the richest and poorest paid in tax. On average the public under-estimates what the poorest 10 per cent pays in tax by 19 percentage points, believing they pay just 24% of their income in taxes.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px;\"><span style=\"-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);\">More importantly, the public <strong>overwhelmingly wants a more progressive tax system - 96%<\/strong>. On average, people believe the poorest 10 per cent should be taxed just 15% of their income, or <strong>28 percentage points less than they currently are<\/strong>. They believe the richest 10 per cent should be taxed 39%, or 4 percentage points more. On average they believe the richest should be taxed nearly 24 percentage points more than than the poorest 10 per cent. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px;\"><span style=\"-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);\">Although there are some fluctuations, support for a more progressive tax system is remarkably broad across political party lines, gender, age and even income groups.  Labour supporters believe the poorest 10% should pay the least, just 13%, with UKIP supporters believing they should pay the highest, at 16%. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);\">One of the reasons we wanted to look at this came from some of the more misleading comments on taxation coming from politicians and commentators - the sorts of things like &#39;the richest 1% pay 30% of all taxes&#39; or promises to &#39;lift the low-paid out of tax&#39; - when they&#39;re only referring to income tax. <\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);\"><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);\">We also regularly hear media talk of how much the poorest&#39;s income comes from &#39;Government handouts&#39; - but we rarely hear how much is then paid in taxation. Obviously we didn&#39;t want to frame tax in a negative light, but we did want to show how far public perceptions of what the poorest pay in tax are off the mark. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);\"><br \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);\">If people are interested in this the report is here -  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.equalitytrust.org.uk\/sites\/default\/files\/attachments\/resources\/Unfair%20and%20Unclear.pdf\">http:\/\/www.equalitytrust.org.uk\/sites\/default\/files\/attachments\/resources\/Unfair%20and%20Unclear.pdf<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I received the following in a mail from the Equality Trust this morning and as I am short of time offer it as is: I<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/06\/16\/the-equality-trust-the-uk-does-not-have-a-progressive-tax-system\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-tax-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}