I think you missed the point. The USA had an income tax rate of over 50% for top-earners for over fifty years - and it was over 70% for twenty of those years.
One of us is, yes, but it isn't me.
You can have a tax rate of 100% if you like, but if nobody is paying it then you're not raising any revenue.
The entire offshore tax avoidance industry ballooned during the years of sky high tax rates in America and the UK, with the result that an awful lot less tax was raised than would have been the case with lower rates.
And that period just so happened to be one of the best periods of economic and social growth for the USA.
You're overlooking the end of two critical events World Wars 1 and 2 which is leading you to completely misunderstand the data and its meaning.
Nor have I heard of any significant numbers of rich people fleeing other countries which have a higher income tax rate than the UK.
As I've explained before, the people don't flee, their wealth does.
In fact, many of the countries with higher income tax rates (e.g. Ireland, Germany, Slovenia, Israel, France, Sweden, etc) are generally considered to be highly prosperous and to have an overall better quality of life than countries with lower income tax rates.
Same rubbish as elsewhere in the thread and already dispensed with in some detail. You;re wrong, your world view is wrong, and you understand nothing whatsoever about taxation.
It's almost as if paying taxes helps to maintain and build the country's infrastructure, and therefore create more opportunities for wealth generation...
We spend vastly greater sums on non-jobs like diversity co-ordinator and administrators than we do on infrastructure. It's almost like you don't understand anything about how the economy works.....
I don't know enough about taxes
I agree, you don't. Which rather begs the question on why you hold so strongly on to such batshit crazy views as you express here. Maybe go and learn a few things first then form opinions based on that rather than whatever emotion feels good at the time, yes?
Money handed to the rich stays with the rich. Money distributed further down the chain goes back into the economy and helps to spur growth.
Wrong on both accounts, so lets add some economics to your reading list right after taxation.
> my current tax rate is around the low 30's and my projected tax rate with professional advice would be around 7% with another 20% lost in fees ... the state will lose over £30k in taxes annually
That suggests that £30k is around 5% of your annual income, which in turn implies that you're earning around £600k per year and paying around £200k per year in taxes while having around £400k - or over £1000 per day - to spend on your lifestyle.
You're going to need to add mathematics to that reading list right after taxes and economics, and hell, lets put critical thinking right into the fourth slot shall we?
What it implies is that in attempting to take another 1% in taxes the state would lose 25-27% of my tax rate or about 75% of the tax it takes right now. I would then lose a further 20% of my earnings in fees for an overall dead weight cost of 27% vs the 43% target rate you'd have been aiming at by increasing higher rate tax by 1%.
And without wanting to sound like I'm trying to be negative or score points, I genuinely do have a question: does your lifestyle actually needs that extra £30k in annual income, or is this all purely a matter of principle?
There's two separate issues at play here. Firstly and most importantly is the matter of principle. I can see no morale case to continue paying extortionate sums to the tax man every day when I see the money wasted hand over fist on jobs that don't need doing, and paying for people to live broken lives on welfare, or for others that could put a lot more effort into their working lives but simply choose not to do so. Penalizing those of us that made and make sacrifices to become successful to prop up those that could have done the same but chose not to is extremely unethical.
Secondly, my income is tied to my profession. I get access to a money purchase plan where I can contribute up to 40k per year maximum and save no more than £1.2M in total. Now, that's exposed to stock market risk, and many plans just lost 40% of their total worth between february and april. It would produce a maximum income of around £36k per annum, and requires a hell of a lot of saving to get there and you'd need to be in a senior pay grade to make it. Oh, and the government keep delaying what age you can take it so now I have to work another 8 years over when I started the plan, and that's likely to rise too.
Contrast that with basically any teacher whose pension will paste that, risk free, for a part time job with 3+ months holiday, and early retirement options that see them done by the time they're 50-55. Or any council or hospital head or judge or head of department whose pensions in payment are several magnitudes of that, gold plated virtually non-contributory, and totally risk free.
So what do people do, well, much of BTL property investment is attempting to produce an annuity like income stream (the rent) that you can take when you're ready to retire, not when some spiv in the the civil service decides you get to retire while he's still planning to go in his early 50s.
And you think tax avoidance is an ethical problem? No, tax avoidance is a bloody economic necessity for most of us in the private sector. To see nothing of the morally reprehensible system rigged in favour of public sector workers to the detriment of the rest of us.