With the budget being delivered at 12.30pm, we’ll focus on how it impacts you. Ask a question or leave your hopes below. Follow the budget live in the Politics Hub.
Wednesday 26 November 2025 09:45, UK
As well as filling the black hole in the public finances, tax rises 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:
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.
Hundreds of you have written in to tell us what you want to see Rachel Reeves announce at the budget. Here’s some more of your wishes…
I’m in a group chat with 13 members and all of us are on £30-55,000 a year and all agree we would pay £10 for the first appointment diagnosis/treatment – if you took yourself straight to A&E you should be charged a fee of £10-£20.
Covkid1
Increase personal allowance for pensioners.
Tony
Public sector pensions have a minimum 22% government contribution – change that to the same 6%-8% as private DC pensions. That would fill the funding gaps easily and be fairer on tax payers.
GAM
I would take even a 2p hike to income tax as long as the personal allowance was raised.
Hammer
Means-test winter fuel payments. Don’t increase state pensions by more than inflation. NHS should be allowed to charge people whose conditions have been caused by lifestyle choices. Alcohol poisoning and need your stomach pumped? Bill. Lung cancer but smoke 20 cigs a day? Bill.
Tom
My business imports goods. I must now increase prices again to cater for the new minimum wage. Already we are being undercut by Chinese companies selling goods direct to the public at prices that escape duty and VAT as they are under a threshold price. This needs to stop now.
Michael R
Instead of reducing pension relief benefits, this should be amended to include say up to 25% relief on mortgage payments for first-time buyers on homes up to a certain value. This would boost housing market and opens options for low cost building incentives.
CM
I would like to see the carer’s allowance increase substantially as unemployed people get more and we work 24/7 looking after our loved ones and get a miserly £2.92 per hour for 35 hours a week.
K Read
1. Scrap the bedroom tax.
2. Scrap paying service charge and leasehold on bought council property.
3. Scrap having to sell your parents’ home to pay for their care in care homes.
4. Lower tax bands for lower paid people. Raise the tax bands for the rich.
Capr86
Keep it simple… 5p on basic rate of income tax. It’s everyone’s problem and everyone pays including pensioners and some higher-paid benefit recipients. Stop faffing about and just do it. No to extending two-child benefit cap, having children is a choice.
Dugret
Taxation will be a dominant part of the budget as Rachel 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 a year.
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.
Some measures already confirmed by the government include:
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.
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 a year.
This means that, while earnings gradually rise each year, the point at which someone starts paying income tax remains the same. So, a great proportion of people’s earnings are subject to tax.
Read our explainer here…
We asked what you wanted to see in the budget today – here’s what you said…
Will you finally get rid of the 60% tax trap? It’s creating division, driving the wrong behaviour and destroying productivity. Just drop it and tax at 45% from £100k.
Phil
The idea of salary sacrifice is to encourage people to save for retirement. Limiting it in the way the chancellor suggests does the opposite, and if in the future they try to keep the state pension down, there’s even less encouragement for workers.
Marko
1p per litre on fuel, 1p on income tax wholly for the NHS, 5% tax on betting winnings over £500, tax on company directors who don’t reward employees, and 1p on every drink at major coffee houses. This would raise huge amounts and be largely invisible to consumers. Give me a job.
Oz1511
Pleased to see salary sacrifice go. It was simply tax evasion.
Frank Hynes
The personal allowance should be increased to £20,000, which would put more money in people’s pockets, and with Christmas coming up this will be a boost to the economy. To help fill the black hole, foreign aid must be scrapped along with all the money being wasted on migrants.
Gred
Will there be any rates relief for small retailers?
Jitupatel
Could a lower tax bracket be available for those on minimum wage – around 17-18%?
john tosh
A cut on stamp duty for houses under £500k, or some positive change to stamp duty, is needed.
Matty96
My budget wishes are simple – for Rachel Reeves to resign! If the budget lands as badly as expected, then the chancellor has to go, as does Starmer in due course.
Steve H
We are facing a pensions time bomb as a nation. When do we stop making pensioners richer through the triple lock and start supporting those who are actively trying to secure their future?
Lee
Would a reduction in salary sacrifice schemes not disadvantage the private sector, which largely has pensions based on savings, compared with the public sector, which already has large contributions and final salary schemes that remove this need?
Stephen74
As a WASPI pensioner who worked full-time for 45 years and had no children – so no time off work – I think people like me should get a higher state pension than those who haven’t worked but had their stamps paid via benefits. As a woman, I wasn’t allowed to join pension schemes.
Kathleen Scott
Betting companies should be made to pay more tax.
They are destroying families who have members addicted to gambling.
Jsb
Taxing the pensioners of the future while making the pensioners of today better off… The grey vote is strong for Labour with this strategy. Just kicking the can down the road.
Sir Topham Hat
As a business start-up, how is the budget going to affect me? I want to put my business profits into the neighbourhood I grew up in to stop young people from taking the road of crime, drug abuse, alcohol abuse and homelessness. Labour are supposed to be the party of the working class.
Kevin
Finally, it’s here.
Rumours, reports and row-backs have sent our heads spinning for months, but from 12.30pm we’ll find out what’s actually in the budget.
There’s a lot on the line. A gaping hole in the public purse, we have been told. But how to fill it without a furious backlash, thwarting growth or inadvertently raising inflation? Changes to pension pots, VAT, income tax, salary sacrifice, council tax and more have all been speculated on.
Will Rachel Reeves break her election promise not to raise taxes on working people? How will she fulfil her aim of lowering the cost of living for typical Britons?
You can watch and follow live in the Politics Hub, while here in Money we will focus on what the announcements mean for the money in your pocket, including a live Q&A with a panel of consumer experts and the blog’s live reporter Jess Sharp at 4.30pm.
The Money blog will return tomorrow to tell you what each budget announcement means for you.
Meantime, we’ll leave you with some evening reading that has nothing to do with tomorrow’s set piece by the chancellor.
Each Tuesday, we begin the day by tackling a reader’s consumer dispute or financial dilemma – but did you know you can catch up with all of these Money Problem posts on our Money tab.
We’ve saved or clawed back tens of thousands of pounds for readers over the past year, so if you have a Money Problem you’d like us to look into…
The cost of a hike in minimum wage from next year will be passed to customers, a hospitality trade body has warned.
From next April, the National Living Wage will increase to £12.71 (up 4.1%) and the wage for 18-20-year-olds will increase to £10.85 (an increase of 8.5%), as we reported in our previous post.
Due to this, UK Hospitality says that the industry it represents will be hit with a £1.4bn bill.
The additional costs, it says, “will simply all be passed through to the consumer, ultimately fuelling inflation”.
To help, UK Hospitality adds that tomorrow’s budget must deliver on “critical” business rates reform.
It’s calling for the following moves:
‘Hospitality businesses have reached their limit’
Kate Nicholls, chair of UK Hospitality, says: “Increases to minimum wage rates are yet another cost for hospitality businesses to balance, at a time when they are already being taxed out.
“These additional costs make action at the budget to reduce hospitality’s tax burden even more important, especially if businesses are expected to sustain this level of annual wage increase.
“Hospitality businesses have reached their limit of absorbing seemingly endless additional costs.”
Millions of people earning minimum wage will get a pay rise next year, the government has announced.
From April, the national living wage will rise by 4.1% 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.
The national minimum wage rate for 18 to 20-year-olds will increase by 8.5% to £10.85 an hour. For 16 to 17-year-olds, and those on apprenticeships, the increase will be 6%, to £8 an hour.
If you’re 18-20, there’ll be an annual earnings increase of £1,500 for a full-time worker, which the government said marks further progress towards its goal of phasing out 18 to 20 wage bands and establishing a single adult rate.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves said she had accepted recommendations from the Low Pay Commission so that those on low incomes were “properly rewarded” for their work.
“I know that the cost of living is still the number one issue for working people and that the economy isn’t working well enough for those on the lowest incomes,” she said.
“Too many people are still struggling to make ends meet, and that has to change.”
The increases will benefit a total of 2.7 million workers, according to the government.
We previously explored what can happen if your boss doesn’t give your pay a boost…
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