.png)
.png)
The people of St Albans pay the highest average income tax of all the UK’s towns and cities, new figures show.
Analysis by UHY Hacker Young of HMRC statistics shows that St Albans’ residents paid an average of £10,500 per taxpayer in the last tax year: more than double (242%) the UK average income tax contribution of £4,333.
Taxpayers in the Hertfordshire town each earned an average of £43,500, which was the highest in the country (where the national average was £24,292). It was followed by the £42,100 earned by the average Windsor resident, who paid £10,100 in income tax.
London narrowly missed out on the top four, which was completed by Guildford and Wokingham. The capital sits fifth in the UHY Hacker Young league table, with an average income of £34,700 and an average income tax burden of £7,740.
‘Commuter belt towns in the South tend to have a more concentrated demographic of higher wage earners, which pushes them higher up the table,’ said the accountancy company’s researchers.
Their data also shows that Hull pays the lowest income tax, with an average rate of £2,360 per taxpayer in the last tax year, on average earnings of £17,300.
UHY Hacker Young also found that the average UK income rose 15.2% over the past four years, while the average income tax increased by 19.6%.
The company’s Rob Durrant-Walker remarked that ‘the Government’s failure to move the higher-rate income tax band in line with wage growth over the past four years has acted as a stealth tax’.
He added: ‘The result has been that taxpayers have seen the income tax they pay increase more than their actual incomes’.
