Top 1% UK Salary: How Much You Need to Earn

The detail

To sit in the UK top 1% of income earners, you need total pre-tax income of roughly £207,000 per year — the 99th percentile of total income in HMRC's Personal Incomes Statistics for the 2023/24 tax year, up from £201,000 in 2022/23.

This figure counts all taxable income — salary, bonus, dividends, rental income, pensions in payment. A salary of £180,000-£190,000 alone probably doesn't quite reach the £207,000 cut-off; the same salary plus material dividend or rental income does. For comparison, the 99th percentile of full-time salaries alone is £186,840 (ONS ASHE 2025), lower than the total-income threshold because the very top of the distribution is dividend-heavy.

The top 1% of Income Tax payers were liable for 27.2% of all UK Income Tax in 2023/24, and HMRC projects that share at 26.6% in 2026/27 (Income Tax liabilities statistics, published 15 July 2026; HMRC calls the top-1% projections indicative). In 2023/24 there were 36.7 million Income Tax payers, so the top 1% is roughly 367,000 people; HMRC projects 40.8 million payers by 2026/27. The same group received 12.4% of total income in 2023/24, so its share of tax is a little over twice its share of income.

Note these are individual thresholds, not household. The top 1% of UK households starts materially higher, because two high-earning individuals can together form a top-1% household while each sits below the individual threshold.