PRIVATE DWELLING-HOUSES IN GREAT BRITAIN
LIKELY TO BE IN THE OCCUPATION OF PERSONS
WITH £700 PER ANNUM AND UPWARDS (1908-9)
| Annual Value. | Metropolis. | Rest of England. | Scotland. |
| £50 to £61 | 76,141 | 10,739 | |
| 61 to 80 | 18,502 | 37,075 | 5,921 |
| 80 to 100 | 10,033 | 24,875 | 3,988 |
| 100 to 150 | 12,593 | 28,411 | 3,949 |
| 150 to 200 | 5,110 | 10,075 | 1,378 |
| 200 to 300 | 5,541 | 7,427 | 681 |
| 300 to 400 | 2,645 | 2,437 | 125 |
| 400 to 500 | 1,408 | 960 | 48 |
| 500 to 600 | 748 | 424 | 15 |
| 600 to 700 | 504 | 210 | 9 |
| 700 to 1000 | 746 | 212 | 13 |
| £1000 and over | 826 | 145 | 26 |
| 58,656 | 188,392 | 26,892 |
If the reader has not before examined the subject he will probably be exceedingly surprised to find that there are so few rich men's houses, and therefore so few rich men, in Great Britain. In England and Wales there are 247,048 houses and in Scotland only 26,892 houses likely to contain persons with incomes exceeding £700 per annum. There are nine times as many such houses in England as in Scotland. This corresponds closely to the income tax assessments. The yield of the income tax in Scotland is but one-ninth or one-tenth of the yield in England.
We have to add an estimate for Ireland. The yield of the income tax in Ireland is very small, about one-third of the yield of Scotland. If, then, we add 9000 houses for Ireland, we shall probably be near the truth.
We thus get the following figures for the whole of the United Kingdom, making our figures round:
PRIVATE DWELLING-HOUSES IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
PROBABLY CORRESPONDING TO INCOME TAX PAYERS
WITH £700 AND UPWARDS PER ANNUM (1908-9)
| Number. | |
| London | 58,700 |
| Rest of England and Wales | 188,400 |
| Scotland | 27,000 |
| Ireland | 9,000 |
| Total | 283,100 |
We can now arrive at an estimate of the total number of income tax payers. It is as follows:
INCOME TAX PAYERS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM (1908-9)
| Incomes. | Number. |
| Between £160 and £700 | 820,000 |
| Exceeding £700 | 280,000 |
| Total | 1,100,000 |
I think that this estimate of 1,100,000 may be accepted with confidence as a near approximation to the actual number of individual incomes which exceeded £160 per annum in 1908-9.
Taking 1,100,000 as a trustworthy figure, we are in a position to show how the population of the United Kingdom is divided by the line of income tax exemption. If we assume that each of the 1,100,000 persons is the head of a family of five persons, we get, by obvious calculation, the following result: