Broad shoulders

Ahead of next week's Budget, we are repeatedly hearing the mantra about those with the broadest shoulders paying the most.

It might be worth the Chancellor remembering that the top 100,000 taxpayers paid 20% of all income tax and capital gains tax. A mere 100 people paid the same amount of tax (£4 billion) as the Government got from 0.5 million basic rate taxpayers.

Of course, 100,000 top earners are very economically mobile and might well consider moving to a more attractive tax regime if Labour introduces a punitive tax regime.

If they did leave, the basic rate of tax for 24 million basic rate taxpayers would have to increase subsnatially to fill the "black hole".