I think you're misrepresenting the issue. You're talking about rates as if they are fungible, conflating income taxes, capital gains taxes, and wealth taxes. T

I think you're misrepresenting the issue. You're talking about rates as if they are fungible, conflating income taxes, capital gains taxes, and wealth taxes. These all have different implementations and ideally different purposes, so the rates should be different. Specifically, your UK example is just wrong. For 2022–23, the average rate of income tax paid was: Basic-rate taxpayers:10% of their income Higher-rate taxpayers:22% Additional-rate taxpayers (the very top):38% So on average, the rich pay a higher effective income-tax rate than middle earners, not “much lower”. In the UK, roughly 60% of all income tax is paid by the top 10% of earners, and about 30% by the top 1%. Because of the double taxation via a 25% corporation tax, for a typical UK investor, tax on capital income is often in the 40–50% range, depending on how the gain is classed.