Millions more people including police officers, nurses and teachers will be paying a higher rate of income tax by 2027.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) believes 7.8 million people will be paying income tax at 40% or above.
That equates to around a fifth of taxpayers and one in seven of the UK adult population.
The IFS says this almost quadruples the share of people paying higher rates of tax since the early 1990s, when 1.6 million adults paid the 40% rate in 1991-2.
A six year freeze to income tax allowances and thresholds could become the biggest tax-raising measure since VAT was hiked in 1979.
It combines with the struggles many workers are facing due to earnings not keeping up with inflation, sparking many industries including nursing to strike.
A report by the IFS explained: ‘By 2027–28, more than one in eight nurses, one in six machinists and fitters, one in five electricians and one in four teachers are set to be higher-rate taxpayers.
‘Among police officers, architects and surveyors, and legal professionals, we also see significant increases in the share paying higher-rate tax over time, with almost half of the latter two groups expected to be paying higher-rate tax in 2027-28.’
The current personal allowance – the amount of income you don’t pay tax on – is currently set at £12,570.
For the 40% tax rate to impact the same fraction of people in 2027 as it did in 1991, the higher rate threshold would need to be nearly £100,000 – nearly double the level set by the government of £50,271.
Isaac Delestre, research economist at the IFS, added: ‘For income tax, the story of the last 30 years has been one of higher-rate tax going from being something reserved for only the very richest, to something that a much larger proportion of adults can expect to encounter.
‘Whether or not the scope of these higher rates should be expanded is a political choice as much as an economic one, but achieving it with a freeze leaves the income tax system hostage to the vagaries of inflation – the higher inflation turns out to be, the bigger impact the freeze will have.’
A Treasury spokesman said: ‘After borrowing hundreds of billions to support the economy during the pandemic and Putin’s energy shock, we had to take some difficult decisions to repair the public finances and get debt falling.
‘It is vital we stick to this plan to halve inflation this year and get our economy growing again.
‘To support working families, we have doubled the tax-free personal allowance, taking three million of the lowest earners out of paying income tax altogether.’
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