What it takes to be in the top 1% of UK income tax payers

I always find it interesting to understand the thresholds involved in being in the various economic strata of UK residents.

This 2019 analysis from the IFS that looks at the top 1% of British income tax payers finds that:

• To be included you’d have needed a taxable income of £160k or more.
• Given a substantial proportion of UK adults don’t pay any income tax - 43% - the threshold would be £120k if you included them.
• The top 1% are disproportionately male, middle-aged and based in London.
• People enter and exit the top 1% regularly. A quarter of those who are in the top 1% of income tax payers one year are not there in the next.
• That fluidity means that 3.4% of all people born in 1963 were in the top 1% sometime between 2000 and 2016.

It must be said that given that the analysis using income tax records it probably misses out some of the wealthiest folk. Anyone who has wealth or sources of income not subject to income tax wouldn’t be included. As would anyone who should be paying their income tax either in principle or in fact but has used the fleet of well-paid financial advisors available to the super-rich to evade their responsibilities for doing so.

Also the analysis is from 2019, so it seems very likely given the turbulent years between then and now that some of the numbers would have shifted since then.