VK PAY

What level of income really makes you “rich”? This week an audience participant on Question Time made the mistake of suggesting his salary of £80,000 plus does not make him rich. Social media outrage followed. That salary puts the man in the top 5% of UK earners and, in the eyes of the other 95%, he is rich. Why, then, doesn’t he feel it? In fact, his take home earnings are not as much higher than the average as a first glance suggests. The top quintile of earners in the UK are on an average of about £88,000. The bottom quintile are on more like £7,900. Add in tax and benefits, and those numbers fall to about £65,500 and rise to £19,000. That means the top fifth take home, on average, 3.4 times as much as the bottom fifth. That’s significant, but much less significant than the 11-fold difference in pre-tax pay.