For example, going from £100,000 to £100,001/year immediately costs you 570 hours/year of free childcare (potentially a couple of thousand pounds per year), and all of your tax-free childcare (potentially over a thousand pounds per year).

Note that this does require _one_ person in a couple to be earning over £100,000, so it's hard to have a lot of sympathy in that case - that certainly doesn't count as struggling! On the other hand, it's also not at all progressive - it comes in all at once, potentially meaning you should refuse a pay rise. It's also _very_ different to the headline tax rate of 40% that you _think_ you're paying...