Wishful thinking

British income tax rates may be about to go through the roof. 

As widely predicted, Alistair Darling introduced a new top level of tax, which will be imposed on people earning over £150,000 a year. They will pay 45p in the pound, up from 40p, from April 2011.

Less anticipated though was the clawback of the personal allowance for higher earners, which will see some taxpayers effectively paying paying 60p in the £1, according to leading accountants. These changes will not just affect the 1pc of taxpayers earning more than £150,000 a year. It will potentially affect 650,000 people earning more than £100,000 a year. To further rub salt into the wound these higher earners will also pay an additional 1pc in National Insurance costs, giving an effective taxation rate of 61pc - a rate not seen since the late 1980s.

[...]

It is estimated that about 400,000 people will have to pay the new supertax, which should raise £2bn for the Treasury.

I hope that's a modest revenue estimate, since those 400,000 people will have other ideas, as indicated in the article.

"Those in this income bracket tend to plan their tax affairs more thoroughly, so they will be exploring ways to legitimately mitigate these higher charges."

Should this British tax boost go through, I don't suppose any of our Democratic leadership will notice that it won't do as much good on the revenue side as it harms the British economy.  Watch the high income Brits start moving to Ireland.