Does the 50p tax rate work? We won't know for five years

The 50p income tax rate may have swelled the state's coffers for now - but it might not do so for long. With the rich ever resourceful, only time will tell.

Here is a silly bit of crowing in the Guardian about how the 50p tax is actually raising money for the state. It isn't silly because the numbers are obviously wrong - it may well be the case that the rate has bumped up the tax-take in the 2010/11 tax year, although not by nearly as much as its fans hoped it might (note that, so far, the total self assessment-take is actually down £500m or so on last year).

But it is silly because it assumes that, if it has bumped up the tax-take, thenit will continue to do so. A good many 50% payers will have found that there is little they can do about their new tax rate in the immediate term they get paid PAYE, so avoidance is tricky, and those who are freelance or self employed may not have stopped to think about it in time for this year's tax bill.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.