That's actually 40% marginal tax on income over £43,000, not £32,000, if you earn under £100,000. It's only 40% from £32,000 if you earn over £122,000.
true, but that already starts to depend on your personal details, which is why comparing countries is hard. For example, while many countries take into account your marital situation when calculating brackets, the UK almost doesn't: it is much better, from a tax perspective, for a household to have 2x 40k earners than 1x 80k earner.
And then of course, you need to compare the services you get for the money the state take from you (e.g. in the UK, state pension is close to nothing so you need to remove 15-20 % of your pre-tax income, and then you need to consider mediocre health system, expensive child care, etc...).
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rates-and-allowan...