Effective rate is far lower, and you can't spend money you've paid in tax on VAT, nor money you've spent on housing, or the multitude of zero rated goods which usually includes food, so the proportion of your money you pay VAT on is usually small.

Last time I actually did the math, I paid about 4% of my gross pay in VAT, and despite being in the top 1-2% or so in the UK my effective rate including VAT is still only just approaching the 50% mark.

The point is, if your effective income tax rate is 35%, you also need to add up all the taxes that aren't income tax, like the 20% VAT, gasoline taxes, alcohol taxes, property taxes, stamp duties, etc, etc.

Add all that up and I wouldn't be surprised if many people had an effective tax rate >50%

I've done the calculations in the past - the effective rate of VAT as a proportion of gross income added up to around 4% for me, because most of my money does not go towards VAT rated products.

Nor does it for anyone.

Because before you spend on VAT-rated products (or alcohol, gasoline etc.), you first pay income taxes, then you pay for housing, and food which most places is zero rated or at a discounted VAT rate, and debts. The higher you earn, the lower proportion of your income tends to go towards spending, partially because you tend to put aside a larger proportion for pensions, partly because you pay a higher rate of tax, so VAT contributes less to your overall tax burden - it's a deeply regressive tax.

Most people don't have enough money to spend on highly taxed items for it to be possible for them to get to an effective tax rate of 50%+, and most of those of us who might be able to spends our money otherwise - bigger house, bigger pensions, more investments.

I earn many times the UK national average, and so pay income tax and national insurance far closer to the 50% mark than the vast majority of the UK population. Despite that I still don't cross it when other taxes are added on. Including VAT, property taxes/council tax and similar. I'm in the top 1-2% income earners in the UK - people earning less than me are certainly getting nowhere near 50%.

Even when I lived in Norway, which has wealth taxes, some of the highest gasoline and alcohol taxes in the world, and higher income tax, and high VAT (25%), did I reach 50%.

In some of the highest tax countries in Europe, like Belgium (an extreme outlier) and Germany, higher proportions will cross the 50% line, but overall for Europe this applies to a vanishingly small proportion of people. UK is "low tax" for Europe, but closer to the average than e.g. Belgium and Germany.

Which is why the "half goes to taxes" crowd almost always ends up forced to start bringing up the total tax wedge instead of other taxes. Even then most people will never hit 50%, though more do.