{"id":285270,"date":"2025-11-27T00:24:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T00:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/285270\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T00:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T00:24:09","slug":"budget-2025-ordinary-people-will-pay-a-little-bit-more-says-reeves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/285270\/","title":{"rendered":"Budget 2025: Ordinary people will pay &#8216;a little bit more&#8217;, says Reeves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why does freezing tax thresholds cost me money?published at 19:02 GMT 26 November<\/p>\n<p>19:02 GMT 26 November<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">One of Rachel Reeves&#8217;s main announcements was that income tax thresholds will be frozen until April 2031. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">That means more workers will pay more tax. But why?<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Take someone on a \u00a350,000 salary. At the moment, their first \u00a312,570 has income tax of 0% (the personal allowance). The rest of their salary has income tax of 20%.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If their pay keeps pace with the current rate of inflation, their salary will be almost \u00a360,000 in five years&#8217; time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">So &#8211; in real terms &#8211; their pay won&#8217;t have risen, because it has only matched inflation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But their tax bill will have increased in real terms. The 40% tax rate begins at \u00a350,270, so in five years&#8217; time they will pay that higher rate on almost \u00a310,000 of their income.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At the moment, they don&#8217;t pay the 40% rate at all.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It&#8217;s not just people whose wages are near a threshold who will be affected. Anyone who pays income tax, who then gets a pay rise, will lose more of their pay, compared to if thresholds rose with inflation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And about a million people who don&#8217;t earn enough to pay income tax now will start paying income tax when their earnings inch above the \u00a312,570 threshold, according to the IFS. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/clydn7r5pn1o\" class=\"ssrcss-f6h2dj-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read our full explainer here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Scotland sets its own income tax bands and rates, but the personal allowance is set in Westminster. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c9qe7g8wyxlo#:~:text=As%20a%20result%2C%20the%20decision,will%20not%20apply%20in%20Scotland.\" class=\"ssrcss-f6h2dj-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">You can read more about the impact in Scotland here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Alt text: Table showing income tax levels in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Personal allowance: first \u00a312,570 earned, taxed at 0%; Basic rate: \u00a312,571 to \u00a350,270 taxed at 20%; Higher rate: \u00a350,271 to \u00a3125,140 taxed at 40%; Additional rate: over \u00a3125,140 taxed at 45%. Notes: Scotland sets its own bands and rates; personal allowance reduced by \u00a31 for every \u00a32 earned between \u00a3100,000 and \u00a3125,140\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/6fcde580-ba8b-4735-91d2-6598a7be4125.png.webp.webp\"  width=\"1600\" height=\"1004\" class=\"ssrcss-11yxrdo-Image edrdn950\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why does freezing tax thresholds cost me money?published at 19:02 GMT 26 November 19:02 GMT 26 November One&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-285270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}