A raft of tax rises is expected in the budget this lunchtime – with the chancellor acknowledging that voters are “angry at the unfairness in our economy”.
In a newly released video, Rachel Reeves said the public is “frustrated at the pace of change” – but vowed to “take the fair and necessary choices” to tackle the cost of living crisis.
And in a dig at the Conservatives – especially former prime minister Liz Truss – she pledged not to impose austerity, lose control of public spending, or engage in more reckless borrowing.
Budget 2025: Follow the latest in the Money blog and Politics Hub
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10 times Labour promised not to hike taxes
Tax rises: What we know so far
Taxation will be a dominant part of the budget as Ms Reeves tries to plug an estimated £30bn black hole in the public finances.
A headline measure is expected to be an extension of the freeze on income tax thresholds for another two years beyond 2028, which should raise about £8bn.
But given the chancellor had ruled out such a measure last year – because it would “hurt working people” and “take more money out of their payslips” – this will attract criticism from opposition parties.
The chancellor has backed away from raising income tax rates outright, a move that would have breached Labour’s manifesto, but she still needs to find the cash to pay for her public spending plans.
Watch our special programme for Budget 2025 live on Sky News from 11am
Some measures already confirmed by the government include:
• Allowing local authorities to impose a levy on tourists staying in their areas
• Expanding the sugar tax levy to packaged milkshakes and lattes
• Imposing extra taxes on higher-value properties
It is being reported that the chancellor will also put a cap on the tax-free allowance for salary sacrifice schemes, raise taxes on gambling firms, and bring in a pay-per-mile scheme for electric vehicles.
Setting the scene ahead of the budget at 12.30pm, Ms Reeves said she will “push ahead with the biggest drive for growth in a generation”, promising investment in infrastructure, housing, security, defence, education, and skills.
Although she has vowed not to “duck challenges” nor “accept that our past must define our future”, she admitted that “the damage done from austerity, a chaotic Brexit, and the pandemic were worse than we thought”.
The fiscal black hole is down to several factors – including a downgrade in the productivity growth forecast, U-turns on cuts to benefits and the winter fuel allowance, as well as “heightened global uncertainty”.
Nonetheless, the chancellor has promised more investment to cut NHS waiting lists, deal with “waste in the public sector”, and reduce the national debt.
“This budget is for you, the British people. So that together we can build a fairer, stronger, and more secure Britain,” she said.
Conservative shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride has said Ms Reeves is “trying to pull the wool over your eyes” – having promised last year that she would not need to raise taxes again.
Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper has accused her and the prime minister of “yet more betrayals”.
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What is the ‘milkshake tax’?
What could her key spending announcements be?
As well as filling the black hole in the public finances, these measures could allow the chancellor to spend money on a key demand of Labour MPs – partially or fully lifting the two-child benefits cap, which they say will have an immediate impact on reducing child poverty.
Benefits more broadly will be uprated in line with inflation, at a cost of £6bn, The Times reports.
In an attempt to help households with the cost of the living, the paper also reports that the chancellor will seek to cut energy bills by removing some green levies, which could see funding for some energy efficiency measures reduced.
Other measures The Times says she will announce include retaining the 5p cut in fuel duty, and extending the Electric Car Grant by an extra year, which gives consumers a £3,750 discount at purchase.
The government has already confirmed several key announcements, including:
• An above-inflation £550 a year increase in the state pension for 13 million eligible pensioners
• A freeze in prescription prices and rail fares
• £5m to refresh libraries in secondary schools
Extra funding for the NHS will also be announced in a bid to slash waiting lists, including the expansion of the “Neighbourhood Health Service” across the country to bring together GP, nursing, dentistry and pharmacy services – as well as £300m of investment into upgrading technology in the health service.
And although the cost of this is borne by businesses, the chancellor will confirm a 4.1% rise to the national living wage – taking it to £12.71 an hour for eligible workers aged 21 and over.
For a full-time worker over the age of 21, that means a pay increase of £900 a year.
Read more from Sky News:
Will expected ‘stealth tax’ announcement affect you?
Are we set for another astoundingly complex budget?
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What the budget will mean for you
Britons facing ‘cost of living permacrisis’
However, the Tories have hit out at the chancellor for the impending tax rises, with shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride saying in a statement: “Having already raised taxes by £40bn, Reeves said she had wiped the slate clean, she wouldn’t be coming back for more, and it was now on her. A year later and she is set to break that promise.”
He described her choices as “political weakness” – choosing “higher welfare and higher taxes”, and “hardworking families are being handed the bill”.
The Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper is also not impressed, and warned last night: “The economy is at a standstill. Despite years of promises from the Conservatives and now Labour to kickstart growth and clamp down on crushing household bills, the British people are facing a cost-of-living permacrisis and yet more betrayals from those in charge.”
She called on the government to negotiate a new customs union with the EU, which she argues would “grow our economy and bring in tens of billions for the Exchequer”.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski has demanded “bold policies and bold choices that make a real difference to ordinary people”.
The SNP is calling on the chancellor to “help families” rather than “hammer them with billions of pounds of cuts and damaging tax hikes that destroy jobs and hurt economic growth”.
A headline tax-raising measure expected in today’s budget is an extension of the freeze on income tax thresholds for another two years beyond 2028, which should raise about £8bn.
The amount people pay is dependent on how much they earn, with different tax bands kicking in at different income levels.
Read more: Chancellor to announce tax rises in budget
In the past, these thresholds have been increased in line with inflation. But more recently they have been frozen, leaving people paying more to the exchequer even if actual tax rates stay the same.
The Conservative government began the thresholds freeze in 2021. At last year’s budget, Rachel Reeves said the Labour government would extend the freeze though not beyond 2028, as to do so would “hurt working people”.
Sky News looks at what the thresholds are, the implications of freezing them, and how that causes “fiscal drag”.
Income tax thresholds
England, Northern Ireland and Wales all have the same income tax rates, set by the British government.
Scotland’s income tax bands are set by the Scottish government, so Westminster budget announcements on income tax do not affect workers in Scotland.
For England, Northern Ireland and Wales, there is a “personal allowance” of £12,570, under which no income tax is paid.
For those earning above £100,000, the personal allowance goes down by £1 for every £2 of income, and can go down to zero, so a person can end up paying income tax on all of their income.
What does freezing thresholds do?
Thresholds were previously increased annually by consumer price index (CPI) inflation – the estimate of the level of prices of goods and services bought by households.
But, because income tax thresholds have been frozen while wages continue to rise, more people are being brought into higher bands and having to pay more income tax.
A worker whose earnings just keep up with inflation is paying a larger proportion of their salary in tax due to the freeze.
This means more money for the government – a lot more.
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The budget vs your wallet: How the chancellor could raise billions
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimates a continuing freeze in thresholds would raise about £42.9bn annually by the 2027/28 tax year.
And the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has projected that freezes to the basic and higher rates of income tax alone would raise £39bn a year by 2029-30.
That is roughly similar to the amount of revenue that would be raised by increasing all income tax rates by 3.5 percentage points.
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Sky News goes inside the room where the budget is decided
Fiscal drag
Freezing income tax thresholds without tax rates increasing has been branded a “stealth tax”, as the government collects more revenue without having to pass a law to raise tax rates.
It is also known as fiscal drag, as more people are pulled into paying tax, or into paying tax at a higher rate.
The OBR estimates the freeze will bring nearly four million more people into paying income tax, three million more people into the higher rate (40%) and 400,000 more into the additional rate (45%) by 2028-29.
Business
Budget 2025: Three things Rachel Reeves’s speech boils down to – and two tricks the chancellor will fall back on
This is going to be a big budget – not to mention a complex budget.
It could, depending on how it lands, determine the fate of this government. And it’s hard to think of many other budgets that have been preceded by quite so much speculation, briefing, and rumour.
All of which is to say, you could be forgiven for feeling rather overwhelmed.
But in practice, what’s happening today can really be boiled down to three things.
1. Not enough growth
The first is that the economy is not growing as fast as many people had hoped. Or, to put it another way, Britain’s productivity growth is much weaker than it once used to be.
The upshot of that is that there’s less money flowing into the exchequer in the form of tax revenues.
2. Not enough cuts
The second factor is that last year and this, the chancellor promised to make certain cuts to welfare – cuts that would have saved the government billions of pounds of spending a year.
But it has failed to implement those cuts. Put those extra billions together with the shortfall from that weaker productivity, and it’s pretty clear there is a looming hole in the public finances.
3. Not enough levers
The third thing to bear in mind is that Rachel Reeves has pledged to tie her hands in the way she responds to this fiscal hole.
She has fiscal rules that mean she can’t ignore it. She has a manifesto pledge which means she is somewhat limited in the levers she can pull to fill it.
Put it all together, and it adds up to a momentous headache for the chancellor. She needs to raise quite a lot of money and all the “easy” ways of doing it (like raising income tax rates or VAT) seem to be off the table.
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The Budget Explained – in 60 seconds
So… what will she do?
Quite how she responds remains to be seen – as does the precise size of the fiscal hole. But if the rumours in Westminster are to be believed, she will fall back upon two tricks most of her predecessors have tried at various points.
First, she will deploy “fiscal drag” to squeeze extra income tax and national insurance payments out of families for the coming five years.
What this means in practice is that even though the headline rate of income tax might not go up, the amount of income we end up being taxed on will grow ever higher in the coming years.
Second, the chancellor is expected to squeeze government spending in the distant years for which she doesn’t yet need to provide detailed plans.
Together, these measures may raise somewhere in the region of £10bn. But Reeves’s big problem is that in practice she needs to raise two or three times this amount. So, how will she do that?
Most likely is that she implements a grab-bag of other tax measures: more expensive council tax for high value properties; new CGT rules; new gambling taxes and more.
No return to austerity, but an Osborne-like predicament…
If this summons up a particular memory from history, it’s precisely the same problem George Osborne faced back in 2012. He wanted to raise quite a lot of money but due to agreements with his coalition partners, he was limited in how many big taxes he could raise.
The resulting budget was, at the time at least, the single most complex budget in history. Consider: in the years between 1970 and 2010 the average UK budget contained 14 tax measures. Osborne’s 2012 budget contained a whopping 61 of them.
And not long after he delivered it, the budget started to unravel. You probably recall the pasty tax, and maybe the granny tax and the charity tax. Essentially, he was forced into a series of embarrassing U-turns. If there was a lesson, it was that trying to wodge so many money-raising measures into a single fiscal event was an accident waiting to happen.
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Can the budget fix economic woes?
Except that… here’s the interesting thing. In the following years, the complexity of budgets didn’t fall – it rose. Osborne broke his own complexity record the next year with the 2013 budget (73 tax measures), and then again in 2016 (86 measures). By 2020 the budget contained a staggering 103 measures. And Reeves’s own first budget, last autumn, very nearly broke this record with 94 measures.
In short, budgets have become more and more complex, chock-full of even more (often microscopic) tax measures.
Read more from Sky News:
What tax measures are expected in budget?
The political jeopardy facing Rachel Reeves in budget
In part, this is a consequence of the fact that, long ago, chancellors seem to have agreed that it would be political suicide to raise the basic rate of income tax or VAT. The consequence is that they have been forced to resort to ever smaller and fiddlier measures to make their numbers add up.
The question is whether this pattern continues. Do we end up with yet another astoundingly complex budget? Will that slew of measures backfire as they did for Osborne in 2012? And, more to the point, will they actually benefit the UK economy?
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