Only one in 100 workers in the East Midlands would have benefited from Kwasi Kwarteng’s plans to cut the top rate of income tax.
The government has u-turned on its plans to abolish the 45 per cent rate of income tax for those earning over £150,000 a year.
It was a policy that proved unpopular with voters and financial markets alike, sending both the pound and the government’s approval ratings tumbling.
A lot of political and financial capital was lost on a tax cut that would only have impacted a tiny fraction of the UK’s population.
There are 2,420,000 people in the East Midlands paying income tax, according to data from HM Revenue and Customs. Just 25,000 of those, one per cent of the total, pay the additional rate of 45 per cent.
There are 33.6 million people paying tax across the whole of the UK. Only 617,000 of those, two per cent, are paying the additional rate. A third of those people (206,000) are based in London.
Just under a quarter (140,000), meanwhile, are based in the South East.
The East of England has the next highest number (72,000), followed by the North West (34,000), the South West (34,000), the West Midlands (29,000), the East Midlands (25,000), Yorkshire and Humber (23,000), and the North East (8,000).
Just 9,000 of the additional rate payers are based in Wales, while 31,000 are in Scotland, and 6,000 in Northern Ireland.
