Bumper bonus payments have helped Britain's top bosses take home an extra 14 per cent over the past year, pay analysts IDS revealed yesterday.

Directors of the most valuable 100 companies topped-up huge salaries with long-term bonuses of over £1 million.

Their basic pay rose by 4 per cent, which IDS called "relatively restrained," despite most people struggling with real-terms pay cuts.

And while directors' annual bonuses fell by 8 per cent, they scooped up a 58 per cent boost in payouts through long-term plans.

The median annual long-term payment total has soared from £764,000 to a £1.2m. Almost two-thirds of bosses at FTSE 100 companies cashed in.

"The higher share-based payouts clearly made up for any ground lost in lower annual bonuses," IDS spokesman Steve Tatton said.

TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said the accounting trick ensured their pay is growing 20 times faster than the average worker.

"It's one thing replacing bonuses with long-term incentive plans,but FTSE 100 companies are simply exploiting this change to make their fat cats even fatter," she said.

"The time has come for legislation to put ordinary workers on the pay committees of companies.

"This is the only way to bring some sanity to the way in which directors are paid."

Boss of the part-nationalised Lloyds bank Antonio Horta-Osorio will be handed a long-term bonus of £2m this week unless its share price plummets.

The analysis of the eye-watering payouts coincided with a Sunday Times report that revealed the gross extent of how wealth is concentrated within a tiny elite.

It found that the top 1 per cent of taxpayers have been so successful at hoovering national wealth that they now account for 30 per cent of the Treasury's income tax take.

That compares with 11 per cent in 1979, when the top rate of tax was 84 per cent.