What Things Cost

Often in debates about public funds, there will be arguments along the lines of ‘why are you spending £10 million on x, when that could be used to pay for y which has a much greater marginal utility.’  However, as far as I’m aware there isn’t an easily accessible and exhaustive list of public pricings for different public policy choices- even budget papers require a lot of interrogation to get to allow you to get to useful comparison points.

That’s why the Guardian’s piece today on 23 things you could pay for with £10 million could be very useful. Even more useful is the spreadsheet at the end of the document, which gives the unit cost of a whole range of public and private goods, from teachers’ wages to house prices to energy bills to Prince Charles.

The Price of Everything

Tax liabilities: 20p, 40p and 50p- who pays?

This spreadsheet from HMRC shows the number of taxpayers who pay the basic rate, ‘higher rate’ (40p) and the ‘additional rate’ (50p) broken down by region.

The relevant spreadsheets start on page 16.

Based on those stats, I’ve put together the table below showing the proportion of people in each region paying each rate of tax for 2011-12. All these numbers are in thousands.

Income Tax Liability Statistics December 2011

Region	All	20p (basic rate)	40p (higher rate)	50p (additional rate)	20p%	40p%	50p%
North East	1210	1080	101	5	89.26%	9.35%	0.41%
North West	3200	2770	318	18	86.56%	11.48%	0.56%
Yorkshire & Humberside	2370	2050	230	13	86.50%	11.22%	0.55%
East Midlands	2160	1850	232	12	85.65%	12.54%	0.56%
West Midlands	2530	2190	253	15	86.56%	11.55%	0.59%
East England	2850	2290	420	34	80.35%	18.34%	1.19%
London	3700	2840	670	94	76.76%	23.59%	2.54%
South East	4340	3390	720	67	78.11%	21.24%	1.54%
South West	2640	2220	295	17	84.09%	13.29%	0.64%
Wales	1380	1220	118	4	88.41%	9.67%	0.29%
Scotland	2570	2200	288	16	85.60%	13.09%	0.62%
Northern Ireland	737	652	64	4	88.47%	9.82%	0.54%
TOTAL	29687	24752	3709	299	83.38%	14.98%	1.01%