Copyright: BBC
Aga Szedzianis and her husband, who are both associate architects, earn just over £50,000 each.
But she says, with price rises, the cost of childcare and their mortgage soon set to go up by £500 a month, things are getting “quite uncomfortable”.
“We had to stop paying pension contributions recently. We can afford only what’s now and not the future,” says the 37-year-old mum-of-two from Newham, east London. “We can’t afford holidays anymore.”
Aga would like to see income tax thresholds going up. Usually tax thresholds rise in line with inflation, but they have been frozen since 2021.
So as your pay goes up, a bigger portion of your income is taxed.
“The biggest help to us would be raising the threshold for paying 40% tax. If it was raised from £50,000 to £60,000, it would [potentially] give us £2,000 a year each.”
As a reminder, the 40% rate of income tax starts in England, Wales, and Northen Ireland on earnings above £50,271. There are different rates in Scotland, which can set its own income tax.