Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget abolished the 45p rate of income tax paid by those earning more than £150,000 a year. That’s a tax bung for just 629,000 people, according to HMRC data. It will cost – by my calculation, because Kwarteng refused to present one – £7.4 billion over the next five years. That’s money that could have been spent on services or reducing people’s gas bills.
Those 629,000 people, a bit less than 2 per cent of the workforce, will get their basic rate of income tax cut, and see taxes on dividends slashed by £4.4bn over the same period. If they work in banking, where £150k mid-career salaries are normal, they’ll have the cap on their Christmas bonuses removed.
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