Zusammenfassung:
The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is likely to raise taxes in the upcoming Budget. In the spring, she decided to meet her borrowing rule by just £10 billion. The subsequent dilution of planned reductions to the generosity of disability benefits, and the partial reversal of recent cuts to pensioners' winter fuel payments, will reduce this slender margin. A downgrade to the Office for Budget Responsibility's economic forecasts could easily eliminate it. If that happens, the Chancellor will face three options: borrow more in breach of her fiscal rules, reduce spending or increase taxation. The first of those options seems unlikely: the Chancellor has (understandably and repeatedly) stated that she will not loosen the fiscal rules. As for spending reductions, unpicking detailed departmental spending plans up to 2028-29 set out in June's Spending Review seems unlikely. Pencilling in cuts to total spending in 2029-30 (the year in which her fiscal rules bind) in order to meet the letter of her targets would be possible but would stretch credulity to breaking point. Cutting benefits has proven to be difficult politically. There is, therefore, a widespread expectation that tax rises will be the key feature of the Budget. For that reason, this chapter sets out the options for tax increases, but such increases are not inevitable. Any changes to tax policy should be done in a way that, ideally, improves the design of the tax system and that, at a minimum, does not worsen it.