(Update: you can now watch the documentary online here)
Inequality is rising up the political agenda right now, but the debate usually descends into clichés about wealth, bankers and tax. On Monday, I try to look at the subject more broadly in a Dispatches documentary for Channel 4 entitled How the Rich Get Richer (clip above). I write about it in the Sunday Telegraph today.
First, the problem is not (as Ed Miliband would have you believe) rich people paying zero tax. For the documentary, I submitted a Freedom of Information request asking after the top 0.01 per cent of earners – ie, the top 3,000. They pay 4.2 percent of all income tax, more than the bottom £9 million. Whether the UK government should be so financially dependent on such a small number of highly mobile taxpayers is an open question.
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