Dr Andrew Summers has been participating in innovative new research – a collaboration between the Resolution Foundation, the London School of Economics and CAGE at the University of Warwick – which uses confidential tax return data to give a fuller picture of the incomes of the top 1 per cent, how it’s changed over time, and how it changes what we thought we knew about UK inequality in the 2010s. Dr Summers will be speaking today at The hidden rise (and fall?) of the Top 1%, an online seminar organised by the Resolution Foundation. He has also been quoted in the Guardian:
"Capital gains are taxed at much lower rates than regular income, but the legal line between these is very blurred. This means business managers have a big tax incentive to take their rewards as gains instead of salary or dividends. When we look at the types of gain going to people at the very top, that’s exactly what we find. A lot of capital gains are, in fact, just repackaged income going to the already-rich.”
Read the Guardian article in full here.
The research has also recently been mentioned in and Financial Times [paywalled]