Un lavoratore ad alto reddito su cinque afferma che la trappola fiscale da 100.000 sterline sta rovinando la sua carriera

Anyone with a brain knows the tax trap needs to be tapered, but its not politically popular to.do.so. fortunately for those earning that amount mps will.be soon in the same tax trap so will.be fixed then

It’s not ruining my career but it’s annoying my employer when I won’t do any extra work on overtime

No shit. There is zero incentive in getting promoted into a managerial role to get a few hundred pounds more a month and double my stress levels.

It’s good for my pension though.

Nobody who isn’t in the trap realises just how bad it can be, much moreso when you have kids in childcare. It’s fair enough that people just can’t sympathise but I’m convinced it is a real drag on the economy – people are reducing hours, stashing the max into pensions etc. to avoid it. DB pensions are also terrifically difficult to deal with in terms of tax planning.

Personally, I think that marginal rates above 50% always feel unfair even though in cash terms it’s not really any different than 49%. Just something about more than half being taken I guess. As well it’s hard to deal with tax codes and collecting the extra tax through payroll so most people who hit the trap find an unexpected tax bill when they do their return the first time. It can be quite a shock if a bonus pushes you up there or something.

The pension contribution taper is another nasty little surprise, if it impacts you then the whole pension regime starts to become a bad financial choice – you get almost no benefit and all the same restrictions. However it affects even less people and nobody gives a shit about them so it seems unlikely to be changed any time soon.

The various tax free allowances get removed at different levels, often in a cliff edge fashion, and rates increase at really quite low amounts these days – the 100k trap should be somewhere around 156k if it had been raised with inflation. The additional rate would be at 234k by now, rather than 125k. In fact everybody in that band earning less than 425k pays more tax now.

I suppose salary sacrifice buying EVs and bicycles are at least priming the second hand market, but that’s a very indirect benefit if it even exists. Luxury car tax is another tax which has become a joke through fiscal drag. We are all getting pumped and it feels like there is no respite in the foreseeable future.

If electricity, housing and food were cheaper then we wouldn’t care so much about the tax. The main issue is that we have people who are higher earner and pay tax and those that earn next to nothing but borrow against their assets and completely dodge tax.

It’s a massive scam and the middle classes are getting hammered because someone has to pay and the ultra wealthy tend to give zero fs.

This genuinely needs to be fixed. I think everyone can agree to that. But to say it’s ruining their career is a bit preposterous.

The pension solution means you still get the money, albeit deferred and you don’t hit the trap. 

That solution gets worse by 2029 so we need to fix it by then. But today I don’t think this is ruining people’s careers.

Combined with fiscal drag and it affects more and more people. If the thresholds had kept pace with inflation over the last 2 decades I doubt we’d be having this conversation at all.

Think it’s time to move the tax bands tbh. 

We pay more and more yet services get worse, everything just gets more expensive. People have nothing left to give. 

I will cross into the 100k threshold before salary sacrifice with this years pay rise.

I know, tiny little violins, though I’m aware I have it much better than most.

I’ve already agreed with work that any future bonuses or pay rises will be in the form of additional leave rather than additional money, because there’s just no point in working when ~70% will go to the government in income taxes, and then an additional ~8-10% will go to the government in point-of-use taxes (VAT, fuel are the main ones).

That’s a massive net loss to the exchequer – both in the lost VAT, in the lost income taxes, the lost employers NI, **and** in the lost corporation taxes from my employer being able to bill clients for my work.

In the real world, without tax brackets having been frozen for 10+ years (when they maybe unfreeze in 2028), the loss of personal allowance threshold would be around £150,000 and the additional rate tax band would start closer to £200,000k, and I would simply take the pay rise and pay more tax – and every additional £15k I would be earning contributes more to the national finances than the entire PAYE, NI & VAT contribution of a minimum wage worker, who receives 0 government benefits.

For most people on minimum wage, what they pay in tax is returned to them in benefits and free childcare hours, which is why people talk about being a net positive to government finances after you earn £35,000+ a year.

Of note, in 2016, additional rate taxes started after £150,000 in PAYE earnings – in 2026, additional rate starts at £125,000 in PAYE earnings – that’s not even a freezing, it’s a reduction on what it was 10 years ago.

Also of note – higher rate tax starting at £50,000 in 2026 is crippling those that **should** be comfortably well off, but are, instead, struggling.

The difference between “wealth” & “income” really ought to be taught at school.

Yeah I would hate to be earning 100k a year, it must be tough wondering where to holiday or being able to comfortably afford basically everything. Poor souls.

as someone who has never earned over 25k this is relatable

Surely it remains the case that every £1 above £100k you earn _increases_ your take home pay, even if that rate is slowed