The wealthiest tenth own 40.7% of Britain's wealth — nobody can say what they actually pay in tax for it
Wealth concentration is measured precisely. What each wealth group pays in tax each year is not — no UK dataset ranks tax paid by wealth. This page shows both, and exactly where the evidence runs out.
Headline figure
40.7%
of all household wealth is held by the wealthiest 10% of households
Great Britain · April 2020 to March 2022 · £5,523bn held by 2.7m households
The bottom 40% of households — 10.8m of them — hold 5%. Ten years earlier the top tenth held 43.6%, though a change in how ONS measures pensions means that fall is not a clean comparison.
- Status:
- Official statistics, accreditation suspended
- Source:
- ONS, Total wealth: Wealth in Great Britain, Table 2.1 (aggregates and household counts), Table 2.2 (aggregates by wealth decile), Table 2.15 (CPIH deflators)
- UK Facts calculated:
- Band totals, shares and per-household means, from ONS decile rows
- Households ranked by:
- total household net wealth
Data quality warning. The Wealth and Assets Survey lost its accredited-official-statistics status on 13 June 2025, when the Office for Statistics Regulation judged its outputs no longer of sufficient quality to meet users’ needs. The suspension has not been lifted. April 2020 to March 2022 remains the most recent published round.
Every square is £100bn
Each square represents £100bn of aggregate household wealth — property and land, private pensions, financial assets and physical possessions, less debts. Households are sorted by how much wealth they have, then grouped. The number of households in each band is shown beneath it, because a band containing 10.8m households and one containing 2.7m are not comparable without it.
2008–10 · July 2008 to June 2010
Total household wealth £8,946bn · 24.7m households
July 2008 to June 2010: total household wealth £8,946 billion across 24,724,000 households. Bottom 40%: £464 billion, 5.2% of the total, held by 9,891,000 households, a mean of £46,899 each. Next 40%: £2,946 billion, 32.9% of the total, held by 9,888,000 households, a mean of £297,917 each. Next 10%: £1,639 billion, 18.3% of the total, held by 2,474,000 households, a mean of £662,557 each. Top 10%: £3,897 billion, 43.6% of the total, held by 2,471,000 households, a mean of £1,577,270 each.
- Bottom 40%
- £464bn (5.2%)
- 9.9m households
Mean £46,899 each - Next 40%
- £2,946bn (32.9%)
- 9.9m households
Mean £297,917 each - Next 10%
- £1,639bn (18.3%)
- 2.5m households
Mean £662,557 each - Top 10%
- £3,897bn (43.6%)
- 2.5m households
Mean £1,577,270 each
Each square = £100bn of aggregate household wealth · 89 squares · Wave 2, Great Britain. Squares are rounded to the nearest whole £100bn, so the count is a reading aid, not the arithmetic — the £bn and % figures above are the data.
2020–22 · April 2020 to March 2022
Total household wealth £13,568bn · 27.0m households
April 2020 to March 2022: total household wealth £13,568 billion across 26,990,000 households. Bottom 40%: £680 billion, 5.0% of the total, held by 10,797,000 households, a mean of £63,020 each. Next 40%: £4,736 billion, 34.9% of the total, held by 10,796,000 households, a mean of £438,655 each. Next 10%: £2,629 billion, 19.4% of the total, held by 2,699,000 households, a mean of £973,896 each. Top 10%: £5,523 billion, 40.7% of the total, held by 2,698,000 households, a mean of £2,047,148 each.
- Bottom 40%
- £680bn (5.0%)
- 10.8m households
Mean £63,020 each - Next 40%
- £4,736bn (34.9%)
- 10.8m households
Mean £438,655 each - Next 10%
- £2,629bn (19.4%)
- 2.7m households
Mean £973,896 each - Top 10%
- £5,523bn (40.7%)
- 2.7m households
Mean £2,047,148 each
Each square = £100bn of aggregate household wealth · 135 squares · Round 8, Great Britain. Squares are rounded to the nearest whole £100bn, so the count is a reading aid, not the arithmetic — the £bn and % figures above are the data.
Break in the series — read before comparing the two years
ONS changed the method used to estimate private pension wealth between the April 2018 to March 2020 and April 2020 to March 2022 rounds. Aggregate private pension wealth is published as £6,445bn before the change and £4,808bn after it. Comparisons of total wealth — and of shares — across that point mix a real change with a methodological one.
The comparison that survives the break is the one that excludes pensions altogether. On that measure, and after adjusting for inflation, total household wealth rose 26.6% between July 2008 to June 2010 and April 2020 to March 2022. Including pensions the rise is 20.3%, but that number mixes a real change with a methodological one and should not be quoted on its own.
The effect is sharper than it looks over the full ten-year span. Compare the two rounds immediately either side of the break — April 2018 to March 2020 to April 2020 to March 2022 — and the top decile’s aggregate wealth appears to fall 16.6% in just two years. It is not a two-year collapse: 97.5% of that apparent fall is the top decile’s own pension component alone (down £1,068bn of the £1,096bn total fall) — the methodology change accounts for essentially the whole of it. Anyone comparing only the two most recent WAS rounds, rather than the longer span shown above, would read a measurement artefact as an event.
Why there is no “top 1%” band
ONS publishes aggregate wealth by decile — tenths — and the survey behind it achieved a sample of 15,100 households. That cannot resolve a top 1% aggregate, let alone the top 0.1%. ONS does state a top-1% share in prose for the latest round: 10% of all household wealth, the same proportion as the least wealthy 50% of households combined. That figure is carried here as text, not drawn as a band, and no equivalent statement exists for 2008–10.
A survey of 15,100 households cannot resolve the very top of the wealth distribution. Independent work (the Wealth Tax Commission; Advani, Bangham and Leslie) finds household surveys under-capture wealth at the top, so 10% should be read as a floor rather than a precise estimate.
Two published figures for the top 1%, and why they differ
Campaign and research publications often say the top 1% hold “over a fifth” of UK wealth. ONS says 10%. Both are real published figures. They differ because they measure different things — not because either is wrong.
| Measure | Top 1% | What it counts |
|---|---|---|
| ONS Wealth and Assets Survey | 10% | Household total wealth including private pensions, as reported to a survey. Great Britain, April 2020 to March 2022. |
| World Inequality Database | 21.3% | Individual net personal wealth, reconstructed from tax records to correct for wealth that surveys systematically miss. United Kingdom, 2023. |
The survey figure is an official statistic and the reconstruction is an independent academic estimate — a lower evidence tier, and one whose recent years are extrapolated rather than observed. The survey figure is the safer number to quote, and it is a floor: a sample of 15,100 households cannot capture the very top, so the true concentration is higher than 10%, by an amount nobody can state precisely. Source: World Inequality Database (WID.world), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — attribution, non-commercial, share-alike.
Key findings
The wealthiest tenth hold about two-fifths of everything
£5,523bn across 2.7m households — a mean of £2,047,148 each. The bottom 40% hold 5%, a mean of £63,020.
Source: ONS, Total wealth: Wealth in Great Britain, Table 2.2
Across the whole tax system, the top tenth pays slightly more than its share of income
Counting Income Tax, National Insurance, Council Tax, VAT and duties together, the top income decile pays a modestly larger share of all household tax than it receives of all gross income. The system as a whole is close to proportional, not steeply progressive.
Source: ONS, Effects of taxes and benefits on household income, Table 2b
On ONS's own cleanest measure, the poorest fifth pays a slightly higher share of income in tax than the richest fifth
At quintile level, direct and indirect taxes combined take 36.7% of the bottom fifth's gross income and 36.2% of the top fifth's — a shallow U-shape across the distribution, not a slope. This table avoids the decile-level lump-sum-payment distortion described below.
Source: ONS, Effects of taxes and benefits on household income, Table 8
Taxes on spending fall hardest on the poorest
VAT and duties take that share of disposable income from the bottom decile against the top. This part of the system is unambiguously regressive, and it falls on households regardless of what they own.
Source: ONS, Effects of taxes and benefits on household income, Table 2b
At the very top, effective tax rates do fall — because of capital gains, not schemes
Mean effective rates peak at 38% at £500,000 of remuneration. Among the top 1%, a quarter pay close to the headline rate while another quarter pay at least 9 percentage points less. Reliefs explain only 5–15% of the gap above £1m — the rest is how remuneration is composed. On income alone, excluding capital gains, the decline disappears.
Source: Advani, Hughson & Summers (2023), Oxford Review of Economic Policy
Nobody publishes tax paid by wealth band
Wealth is measured by one survey ranking households by assets; tax is measured by another ranking them by income. No dataset joins the two, so “what the top 10% of wealth-holders pay in tax” has no measured answer in the UK.
Source: UK Facts evidence-gap register
HMRC does not measure the offshore tax gap at all
Wealthy individuals account for 6% of the total tax gap and small businesses for 62%. A stand-alone offshore estimate is promised for 2027 and does not yet exist.
Why the tax figures are not drawn on top of the wealth squares
How much tax does each wealth band — the bottom 40%, the next 40%, the next 10%, the top 10%, the top 1% — actually pay each year?
No UK dataset measures annual tax paid against a household's position in the WEALTH distribution. The two series that exist are ranked on different axes by different surveys. The ONS Wealth and Assets Survey ranks households by net wealth and measures assets, not tax. The ONS Effects of Taxes and Benefits analysis measures direct and indirect tax in detail but ranks households by equivalised disposable INCOME. HMRC's administrative statistics are richer still but are organised by income and by tax liability, not by wealth. Because wealth and income rank households differently — ONS's own WAS Table 2.6 shows the LOWEST income decile holding higher median wealth (£132,000, April 2020 to March 2022) than income deciles 2 and 3 — a figure taken from the income-ranked series cannot be attributed to a wealth band without asserting a correspondence the data contradicts.
ONS’s own data shows the two rankings disagree
Median household wealth by income decile, April 2020 to March 2022. The lowest income decile holds a median of £132,000 — more than income deciles 2 and 3. Retired households with assets and little income sit at the bottom of one ranking and well up the other.
- Lowest£132,000
- Decile 2£109,800
- Decile 3£122,800
- Decile 4£155,600
- Decile 5£236,500
- Decile 6£257,200
- Decile 7£379,400
- Decile 8£491,600
- Decile 9£615,100
- Highest£932,200
ONS Total wealth dataset, Table 2.6 · ONS · Great Britain
The proxy usually offered, and why it is not the answer
Tax paid by INCOME decile (ONS Effects of Taxes and Benefits, Table 2b) is routinely presented as though it described the wealthy, and effective tax rates by total remuneration (Advani, Hughson and Summers 2023) are often read as rates on the wealthy.
Both rank people by a flow (income, or income plus realised gains), not by a stock (wealth). They answer 'what do high earners pay?', which is a different question from 'what do wealth holders pay?'. The mismatch is not marginal: retired, asset-rich, low-income households sit near the bottom of the income ranking and near the top of the wealth ranking, and someone whose wealth generates no realised income appears in neither high-income series at all.
What would close it. A linked-data study joining wealth survey or administrative wealth records to HMRC tax records for the same households — the kind of linkage HMRC's own High Wealth Compliance work and the Wealth Tax Commission both identified as absent. Failing that, ONS could publish an experimental cross-tabulation of tax paid by total-wealth decile using the Wealth and Assets Survey's own income and tax variables, which would at least put both quantities on one ranking within one survey.
A third partial proxy, not a wealth-decile answer either
HMRC runs a compliance customer segment it calls “Wealthy individuals” — 0.85m people with income of £200,000+ or assets of £2m+ in any of the last three tax years — who contributed £120bn in personal tax in 2023 to 2024. Added to the £350bn paid by the other 35m individual taxpayers, that is 25.5%of the whole personal tax base — a UK Facts calculation from HMRC’s own customer-group table, not a figure HMRC states directly.
Defined by income OR assets (£200,000+ income, or £2m+ assets, in any of the last three tax years) — not a wealth-decile population, and mixes two different qualifying routes. HMRC itself states it has not evaluated whether grouping everyone in this segment together affects compliance outcomes, nor broken results down further by wealth within the group. Closer to a wealth measure than the income-decile figures elsewhere on this page, because assets alone can qualify someone regardless of income — but still not the missing wealth-band series.
Source: HMRC, Tax by different customer groups, 2023 to 2024. Flagged via New Economics Foundation, "Taxing invisible wealth" (Balata & Wright, January 2026).
What each group actually pays in tax each year
Read this carefully: everything below measures earnings, not wealth. These charts rank households by income — how much they earn in a year — and show what that income-ranked group pays in tax. They are driven by what people earn, and how earning feeds spending and the wider economy, not by what they own. The ten groups here are not the same ten groups as the wealth squares above; a household can be near the bottom of one ranking and near the top of the other (see the mismatch table below).
This is nonetheless the closest measured answer to the tax question. It counts everything: Income Tax, National Insurance, Council Tax and student loan repayments, plus VAT, fuel and alcohol duties and the taxes embedded in prices.
The top tenth pays about seven times what the bottom tenth pays
Average total tax per household, by income decile. The top decile pays £70,797 a year against £8,494 for the bottom.
- Bottom£8,494
- 2nd£8,757
- 3rd£11,923
- 4th£12,837
- 5th£16,242
- 6th£18,435
- 7th£22,132
- 8th£28,430
- 9th£33,009
- Top£70,797
View data table
| Income decile | Gross income | Direct tax | Indirect tax | Total tax | % of gross income | Indirect as % of disposable | Tax per person |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bottom | £17,938 | £3,640 | £4,854 | £8,494 | 47.4% | 33.9% | £3,761 |
| 2nd | £29,053 | £3,753 | £5,004 | £8,757 | 30.1% | 19.8% | £3,798 |
| 3rd | £36,591 | £5,483 | £6,440 | £11,923 | 32.6% | 20.7% | £5,276 |
| 4th | £43,991 | £7,133 | £5,704 | £12,837 | 29.2% | 15.5% | £5,588 |
| 5th | £53,140 | £9,595 | £6,647 | £16,242 | 30.6% | 15.3% | £6,782 |
| 6th | £61,786 | £11,369 | £7,066 | £18,435 | 29.8% | 14% | £7,567 |
| 7th | £72,812 | £14,846 | £7,286 | £22,132 | 30.4% | 12.6% | £8,755 |
| 8th | £86,662 | £19,179 | £9,251 | £28,430 | 32.8% | 13.7% | £11,195 |
| 9th | £101,710 | £23,742 | £9,267 | £33,009 | 32.5% | 11.9% | £13,642 |
| Top | £184,980 | £58,688 | £12,109 | £70,797 | 38.3% | 9.6% | £31,962 |
| Per-person figures are UK Facts calculations: total tax per household divided by the average number of people per household in that decile, both from the same ONS table. All other columns are published or simple sums of published columns. | |||||||
United Kingdom · Source: ONS, Effects of taxes and benefits on household income, Table 2b · as of Financial year ending 2024 (April 2023 to March 2024)
Tax paid per person, not per household
Each decile's household tax bill divided by the average number of people in those households: £3,761 a head at the bottom, £31,962 at the top.
- Bottom£3,761
- 2nd£3,798
- 3rd£5,276
- 4th£5,588
- 5th£6,782
- 6th£7,567
- 7th£8,755
- 8th£11,195
- 9th£13,642
- Top£31,962
United Kingdom · Source: ONS, Effects of taxes and benefits on household income, Table 2b — UK Facts calculation · as of Financial year ending 2024 (April 2023 to March 2024)
As a share of income, the rate is a shallow U — not a slope
Total tax as a percentage of gross income. It falls through the lower-middle of the distribution and rises again at the top. The bottom decile's figure is an artefact, not a finding — see the note below.
- Bottom47.4%
- 2nd30.1%
- 3rd32.6%
- 4th29.2%
- 5th30.6%
- 6th29.8%
- 7th30.4%
- 8th32.8%
- 9th32.5%
- Top38.3%
United Kingdom · Source: ONS, Effects of taxes and benefits on household income, Table 2b · as of Financial year ending 2024 (April 2023 to March 2024)
The bottom decile’s 47.4% is not what it looks like
ONS note 6: "the inclusion of lump sum tax payments deferred from a previous financial year(s) can lead to high estimates of direct taxes paid for the lowest deciles ... as people with high gross incomes can end up towards the lower end of the income distribution by virtue of large deferred direct tax payments which are not reflective of their direct tax liabilities for a typical financial year." The bottom decile's effective rate is therefore an overstatement, not a finding.
ONS note 18: indirect-tax, benefit-in-kind and post-tax figures are three-year averages, not single-year estimates.
The top income decile: what it pays, against what it receives
- Share of all household tax paid32.5%
- Share of all gross income28.6%
This is the whole-system answer, and it is undramatic in both directions. The top tenth pays a somewhat larger share of all household tax than it takes of all gross income — but only somewhat. Anyone arguing the rich are carrying an extraordinary burden, and anyone arguing they contribute nothing, is contradicted by the same table.
The single cleanest measure on this page
ONS itself publishes an effective-tax-rate table — ONS, Effects of taxes and benefits on household income, Table 8 — at quintile rather than decile level, which is less exposed to the lump-sum-payment distortion above. On it, the poorest fifth pays 36.7% of gross income in all taxes combined; the richest fifth pays 36.2% — marginally less, not more.
| Quintile | Mean gross income | Direct taxes | Indirect taxes | All taxes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bottom | £18,085 | 15.7% | 21% | 36.7% |
| 2nd | £32,108 | 15.7% | 15.1% | 30.7% |
| 3rd | £44,664 | 18.2% | 11.9% | 30.2% |
| 4th | £61,406 | 21.3% | 10.4% | 31.7% |
| Top | £119,946 | 28.8% | 7.5% | 36.2% |
The shape is a shallow U, not a slope: 36.7% at the bottom, dipping to 30.2% through the middle, back up to 36.2% at the top — driven by direct taxes rising with income (15.7% → 28.8%) while indirect taxes fall as income rises (21% → 7.5%), and the two nearly cancel at the ends. Income figures are per-quintile MEANS (ONS, Effects of taxes and benefits on household income, Table 1) — ONS does not publish a lower/upper income boundary for each group in either table, so none is shown here.
These five quintiles cover every individual in the survey: 67.1m people across 28.4m households, United Kingdom, Financial year ending 2024 (April 2023 to March 2024) — all individuals surveyed, children included, not only adults.
Could this data help design a wealth tax? Not directly — every wealth-tax proposal on this site is built around an asset threshold (net wealth above £10m, £100m and so on), and the charts above rank households by income, so they cannot show where an asset threshold would fall or who would cross it. What they usefully show instead is the earnings side of the picture the debate sits alongside: how unevenly income tax and NICs are already distributed. Compare that context against the actual designs being proposed: the wealth-tax options, compared → or move a real wealth-tax threshold yourself and follow the consequences, including who it’s modelled to affect: Tax Lab’s wealth-tax simulator → And before designing one at all, it’s worth checking the most common objection to it: would higher wealth taxation make millionaires leave? →
What people often get wrong
“The top 1% pay nearly 30% of all tax”
They pay 27.2% of Income Tax (2023 to 2024 (outturn)), and the top 10% pay 59.1%. Both figures are real and published by HMRC. Income Tax is one tax among many and is levied only on the 36.7 million people who pay it. Measured across the whole tax system — including National Insurance, Council Tax, VAT and duties, which fall on everyone — the top tenth of households pays a much less exceptional share. Both figures are true; quoting either alone misleads.
“The rich pay less because of offshore accounts and avoidance schemes”
Effective rates really do fall at the top — that part is well evidenced. But the best UK study of it finds the cause is overwhelmingly that capital gains are taxed at lower statutory rates than wages, not that people are using schemes. Reliefs explain a small remainder, and most of that is charitable giving. Offshore evasion is a real and separate concern, but HMRC does not currently measure it, so it cannot be the evidenced explanation for anything.
“Wealth deciles and income deciles are roughly the same people”
They are not, and the difference is large enough to invert the order. On ONS’s figures the lowest income decile holds more median wealth than the second and third income deciles. Pensioners with a paid-off house and a small income are poor on one measure and comfortable on the other.
“Total wealth fell after 2020”
Published total wealth is lower in April 2020 to March 2022 (£13,568bn) than in the round before it (£15,221bn). That is mostly a change in how ONS estimates private pension wealth, not households becoming poorer. Excluding pensions, wealth rose.
What it means
What the data directly shows
- Wealth is far more concentrated than income: the top tenth holds 40.7% of wealth but receives 28.6% of income.
- Taxes on spending are regressive, taking 33.9% of disposable income at the bottom and 9.6% at the top.
- Across all taxes together, the system is close to proportional to income — on ONS's own quintile-level table, the poorest fifth's share of gross income taken in tax (36.7%) is marginally higher than the richest fifth's (36.2%).
What can reasonably be inferred
- Because tax is levied mainly on income and spending, and wealth is much more concentrated than either, the tax system does comparatively little to touch the wealth distribution.
- Effective rates falling for a substantial share of the highest earners implies the rate structure, not enforcement, is doing the work.
What the evidence cannot establish
- What any wealth band pays in tax annually. No dataset measures it.
- How much tax is lost offshore. HMRC has no published estimate.
- Whether taxing wealth more heavily would raise the modelled sums, once behaviour responds.
Remuneration at the top of the UK distribution arriving as realised capital gains and investment income, which carry lower statutory tax rates than earnings → Lower effective average tax rates for a substantial share of top earners (e.g. a quarter of those with £3m-£5m of total remuneration pay under 13%, against a 47% headline rate on earnings)
UK statutory rates differ by the FORM remuneration takes: earnings attract income tax plus National Insurance up to a 47% headline rate, while realised capital gains attract materially lower rates. People whose remuneration is composed mainly of gains therefore pay a lower effective average rate than people with the same total remuneration paid as salary. Advani, Hughson and Summers find that among people with total remuneration above £1 million, tax reliefs account for only around 5-15% of the gap between their actual and headline rates — the great majority of the gap is this compositional effect, not reliefs, and the paper does not measure evasion at all.
Alternative explanations
- · Illegal evasion and undeclared offshore income — a distinct channel the study cannot observe, because it relies on data collected through administration of the existing tax base
- · Legal avoidance through complex reliefs and structures — found to account for only a small share of the gap, and mostly charitable giving and investment incentives rather than aggressive planning
- · Deliberate policy choice: lower rates on capital are argued by their defenders to compensate for inflation on nominal gains, double taxation of corporate profits, and lock-in effects, which would make the lower effective rate an intended feature rather than a leak
Limitations
- · On INCOME ALONE, excluding realised capital gains, the mean effective rate does not decline the way the total-remuneration rate does — it peaks at 43% for those with £1.3m of total income and is then broadly flat. The declining-rate finding is specific to a measure that includes gains, and stating it without that qualification materially misleads.
- · The study measures effective rates on remuneration, not 'contribution to the economy'. It says nothing about indirect taxes, and nothing about what any group's wealth does when it is not taxed.
- · It cannot observe unrealised gains, income exempt from tax altogether, or undeclared offshore holdings, so it is silent on exactly the channel most often asserted in public debate.
In short. Effective tax rates really do fall at the very top of the UK remuneration distribution for a substantial share of that group, and the best available evidence — HMRC administrative microdata — establishes it clearly. But the cause is overwhelmingly the legal rate structure: capital gains are taxed less than wages, and reliefs account for only 5-15% of the gap above £1m remuneration. It is not principally avoidance schemes, and the study cannot speak to offshore evasion at all. On income alone the decline is far smaller and levels off rather than continuing to fall.
Advani, A., Hughson, H. and Summers, A. (2023), "How much tax do the rich really pay? Evidence from the UK", Oxford Review of Economic Policy 39(3), 406–437 · https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grad032 · Open Access, CC BY 4.0 · HMRC anonymised administrative data on the population of UK taxpayers; headline results for 2018 (Figures 1, 2, 4 and 5)
What can change this
Two different things could change: what the tax system collects, and what the statistics can see. They are separate problems and only one of them is about tax policy.
Aligning tax rates on gains with rates on earnings
The mechanism the evidence actually identifies. If everyone with income above £100,000 paid the headline rates, the authors estimate this would raise £23bn more on a static basis — a 27% increase in the tax paid by that group. A static estimate holds behaviour constant and is an upper bound. Trade-offs: gains are partly nominal, so taxing them at earnings rates taxes inflation; realisation is discretionary, so people can defer; and the estimate holds behaviour constant, which no real reform does.
Evidence: peer-reviewed analysis of HMRC microdata. Status: an external option, not current policy.
An annual tax on net wealth
The option most often proposed in response to the concentration shown above. UK Facts sets out six designs, who advances each, and how far each revenue figure can be verified, on the main inequality page.
Restoring the Wealth and Assets Survey
Every wealth figure on this page carries a quality warning because the survey lost its accreditation in June 2025 over falling response rates and lack of investment. Meeting the five requirements the regulator set would restore it. Until then the most recent picture of British wealth is from a survey the statistics regulator has judged not fit for its users’ needs.
Publishing tax paid by wealth band, and an offshore tax gap
Neither exists today. HMRC has committed to a stand-alone offshore tax gap estimate in 2027. A cross-tabulation of tax paid by wealth decile would need either that linkage or ONS publishing the tax variables already collected in the wealth survey against its own wealth deciles.
Detail and methodology
Full tax table by income decile
| Income decile | Gross income | Direct tax | Indirect tax | Total tax | % of gross income | Indirect as % of disposable | Tax per person |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bottom | £17,938 | £3,640 | £4,854 | £8,494 | 47.4% | 33.9% | £3,761 |
| 2nd | £29,053 | £3,753 | £5,004 | £8,757 | 30.1% | 19.8% | £3,798 |
| 3rd | £36,591 | £5,483 | £6,440 | £11,923 | 32.6% | 20.7% | £5,276 |
| 4th | £43,991 | £7,133 | £5,704 | £12,837 | 29.2% | 15.5% | £5,588 |
| 5th | £53,140 | £9,595 | £6,647 | £16,242 | 30.6% | 15.3% | £6,782 |
| 6th | £61,786 | £11,369 | £7,066 | £18,435 | 29.8% | 14% | £7,567 |
| 7th | £72,812 | £14,846 | £7,286 | £22,132 | 30.4% | 12.6% | £8,755 |
| 8th | £86,662 | £19,179 | £9,251 | £28,430 | 32.8% | 13.7% | £11,195 |
| 9th | £101,710 | £23,742 | £9,267 | £33,009 | 32.5% | 11.9% | £13,642 |
| Top | £184,980 | £58,688 | £12,109 | £70,797 | 38.3% | 9.6% | £31,962 |
| Per-person figures are UK Facts calculations: total tax per household divided by the average number of people per household in that decile, both from the same ONS table. All other columns are published or simple sums of published columns. | |||||||
Wealth by band, both rounds
| Band | 2008–10 £bn | 2008–10 share | 2020–22 £bn | 2020–22 share | Households | Mean per household |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bottom 40% | £464 | 5.2% | £680 | 5% | 10,797,000 | £63,020 |
| Next 40% | £2,946 | 32.9% | £4,736 | 34.9% | 10,796,000 | £438,655 |
| Next 10% | £1,639 | 18.3% | £2,629 | 19.4% | 2,699,000 | £973,896 |
| Top 10% | £3,897 | 43.6% | £5,523 | 40.7% | 2,698,000 | £2,047,148 |
Source and methodology
- Wealth producer
- Office for National Statistics
- Wealth dataset
- Total wealth: Wealth in Great Britain, July 2006 to June 2016/April 2014 to March 2022
- Wealth tables
- Table 2.1 (aggregates and household counts), Table 2.2 (aggregates by wealth decile), Table 2.15 (CPIH deflators)
- Wealth geography
- Great Britain — not the UK
- Tax producer
- Office for National Statistics
- Tax dataset
- The Effects of Taxes and Benefits on Household Income, UK, 2023/24 — Reference Tables, Table 2b
- Tax period
- Financial year ending 2024 (April 2023 to March 2024)
- Tax geography
- United Kingdom
- Retrieved
- 2026-09-02
- Status
- Wealth: accreditation suspended. Tax: official statistics.
What UK Facts calculated. Band totals, shares, household counts and mean wealth per household are summed from ONS’s published decile rows. Total tax per household is the sum of ONS’s published direct and indirect tax rows. Effective rates, per-person tax, and each decile’s share of all tax and all gross income are UK Facts calculations from those published rows. Real-terms figures use ONS’s own CPIH deflators (Table 2.15). Every one of these is computed in code from the source rows — none is typed by hand into the page. Nothing on this page is taken from a secondary summary of the data.
Known limitations. The top decile begins at £71,077 of equivalised disposable income. This analysis cannot see inside the top decile, and so cannot describe the top 1% or the top 0.1% at all. ONS note 11: income estimates from 2001/02 onwards are adjusted for the under-coverage and under-reporting of top earners. The adjustment does not make the survey able to resolve the top 1%. The wealth survey covers Great Britain while the tax analysis covers the United Kingdom, so even the closest available series do not share a geography — a further reason they are not combined.
Related
- Inequality: the main page
Income, hardship, health gradient, and the wealth-tax options compared.
- Where tax goes uncollected
The tax gap, and what is and is not recoverable.
- Public finances
What the tax system raises in total, and what it is spent on.
- Historical charts
Wealth share by group, the Gini coefficient and child poverty over time.
- Tax Lab
Change Income Tax, wealth tax or Corporation Tax rates and follow the consequences — including the unintended ones.
- How do you tax land without hurting farmers?
A real, unresolved design trade-off — no slider, no declared winner.