The 95% rate applied to the top slice
When George Harrison wrote “Taxman” for the Beatles’ 1966 album Revolver, Britain’s highest earners could face a top marginal tax rate of about 95%. “Marginal” is the key word: that rate applied to income above a threshold, not to every pound a person earned. Even so, for a band bringing in substantial income, the tax bill could make success feel less lucrative than the headline earnings suggested.
That distinction helps explain the song’s complaint without taking its lyrics as a literal tax calculation. Harrison turns the tax collector into a character who seems to claim a cut of everything—from a car to a place in the sun. The joke is exaggerated, but the frustration behind it was real: a very high rate on the top portion of income could leave a much smaller share of each additional pound.
A sharp edge in the Beatles’ sound
Harrison matched that grievance with a lean, biting arrangement rather than a grand protest anthem. The song opens with a spoken count-in, then snaps into a clipped guitar riff and a steady, driving beat. Its dry humor makes the complaint feel less like a lecture than a taunt.
The lyrics even name Britain’s political leaders, Labour prime minister Harold Wilson and Conservative politician Edward Heath, broadening the target beyond one tax official. And there is a small twist in the recording: Paul McCartney, not Harrison, played the prominent lead-guitar solo. The result is a track that sounds tightly controlled while railing against how little control its narrator feels he has over the money he earns.
