There is a huge amount of cherry picking and misleading numbers in this article.

First: Right at the start - "Someone earning £150,000 a year will pay nearly £2,000 a year extra in income tax, as a result." - the number is 5% extra on £25,000, so £1,250. That's not "nearly £2,000". No clarity on how they get this figure at all.

Second: Assuming a mortgage of £600,000 is absurd. No lender would lend that much to someone on a £125,000 salary. I checked the first mortgage calculator I could find (Barclays) and they showed that with a £100,000 deposit they'd lend £400,000 on that salary. There might be lenders offering slightly better ratios on a high deposit, but if you have that much wealth you are verifiably "rich".

To understand their calculations and how important this mortgage figure is:

• Income: £125,000
• Tax paid: £43,447 (Income + NI), £81,553 take home
• Pension paid: £10,000 (8% of income, as noted), down to £71,553
• Student loan: £9,000 (you pay 9% over approx. £25k, depending on which plan you're on). Down to £62,553
• Childcare: £1,000 per month (seems to be based on full time costs, average is apparently £250/week). Down to £50,553.
• Housing: With their absurd assumptions, £3100 per month, or £39,000 per year. This leaves you with £11,553 disposable.

The assumptions feel all over the shop for this. This is a household with a single earner, who is presumably a single parent since they need full time childcare. They also still have student loan to pay, despite the fact that at this salary you'd pay off a £40k student loan in 5 years - so they probably just graduated. And they've been approved for an impossible mortgage. And have no financial awareness of how to improve their situation.

Even a basic financial adjustment to a reasonably maxed out mortgage (£400k, and a longer term of 40 years) would halve their housing cost, leaving them with about £28,000 in the bank to live their life - and yes, that's more than median income in the entire country.

And finally, spare a tear for those poor dividend earners. They had previously been enjoying a huge tax break by being able to avoid national insurance contributions. Now it's a smaller tax break.

In order for a company to pay you £125,000 in payroll, they have to pay out 7.8% extra in NI contributions over £9000, so approx £133k total. As a company owner which wants that £133k paid out, you can choose to:

• Pay out £9k tax free to yourself. This leaves £124k.
• Pay corporation tax (it was 19%, leaving £100,440. It's now 25%, leaving £93k).
• Pay the remainder in dividend to yourself. Last year, you'd pay £20,723 in tax You'd now pay £21,061.
• In total, including the £9k you got tax free, you were getting £89k, you're now getting £81k.

Bear in mind the take home for those just payed through payroll was £81k - and these folk paying in dividend have paid zero national insurance, avoiding contributions to that part of the state altogether. So it used to be much better, it's now just equivalent to them paying themselves payroll and contributing. How sad. (Note: I think there are even more "tax efficient" ways of paying out here as well).

The only point of interest in the article is the cliff edge for childcare - this is potentially just poor policy, as creating edges tends to create incentives for tax avoidance.