The Guardian, Sunday 22 December 2013
n deciding who are the middle class (Letters,
18 December), one crucial source of information is the Office for
National Statistics data on household incomes. This shows that in
2011-12, the top 10th of households with the highest incomes received
27% of all income both gross and after tax.
(The UK has for households what amounts to a flat tax system other than
for the poorest tenth of households who pay a higher proportion of
their income in tax than any other decile.) This was far more than the
next 10th down, who received about 16% of all gross and net income. The
decile below that, the eighth highest, received about 13% of gross and
net income. From the lowest 10th to the ninth decile, the difference in
income levels rises in a smooth line, but between the ninth and 10th
deciles incomes rise by nearly 70%. It is precisely these very much
higher incomes, post-tax as well as pre-tax, which fund most private
education in the UK, the main route by which the privileged pass on
privileges to their offspring.
So if we think about household
incomes, then we have an upper class of plutocrats who do not really
appear in the relevant data set and who by the way pay very little tax
because of their systematic use of the tax avoidance
industry, a middle class of those in the top decile of households we
know about, although they also often legally avoid tax, and the rest of
us below them.
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