From 8779e4380c7e2dde8bb7c55e363ae0af0ef0b235 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 15:21:39 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 01/21] Add the post-Budget written briefing for the Autumn Budget 2026 Draft from the dashboard's test publication, manifest revision 43. 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This briefing sets out what the seven measures for households in our [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/autumn-budget-2026) do together and one by one, how our estimates compare with the official costings, and which measures we don't yet model. + +Key results, from PolicyEngine's static microsimulation: + +- The seven measures cost £3.11 billion in 2026-27 and £0.61 billion in 2027-28. From 2028-29 they raise money: £0.21 billion in 2028-29, and between £0.17 billion and £0.30 billion a year to 2031-32. +- In 2026-27 they raise household net income by £107 a year on average. Every income decile gains between £98 and £110, so the gain is 0.41% of net income in the lowest-income decile and 0.06% in the highest. +- 98.6% of people live in households that gain in 2026-27. In 2029-30, after the energy measures end, 3.9% of people live in households that gain and 5.6% in households that lose. +- The highest-income decile loses £50 a year on average in 2028-29, rising to £56 in 2031-32, as property income tax rates rise. +- The package changes poverty by less than 0.05 percentage points in every year, on every poverty measure we publish. + +_[Use PolicyEngine's Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/autumn-budget-2026) to explore the results by measure, year and household, or to calculate the effect on your own household._ + +## What the Budget does for households + +**Table 1: The seven measures we model** + +| Measure | What changes | When | +| ------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------- | +| Household Energy Payment | A one-off £100 for households in council tax bands A to D in England | Paid from January 2027 | +| Zero VAT on electricity | The 0% rate on household electricity, in force in Great Britain since 1 October 2026, is extended by three months | To 1 July 2027 | +| Fuel duty | The 5p cut, which holds the main rate at 52.95p a litre, is extended, and the April 2027 RPI rise moves to 1 July 2027 | To 1 July 2027 | +| Pension Tax Allowance | An income tax reduction for people over State Pension age whose total income is at most the full new State Pension, tapered above it | 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030 | +| Property income tax | Rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland | From 6 April 2027 | +| Trading allowance | Rises from £1,000 to £3,000 | From 6 April 2027 | +| Carer's Allowance taper | Above the weekly earnings limit, the allowance is withdrawn £1 for each £1 earned instead of all at once, in England and Wales | During 2030-31 | + +Sources: [Budget 2026](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/budget-2026-document/budget-2026-html) and the [policy costings](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026). + +The Budget makes other changes that reach households, which our dashboard does not model: + +- **Savings income tax.** From 6 April 2027 the rates on savings income also rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% across the UK. We give the official costing [below](#savings-income); our own estimate follows with a data update. +- **The Triple Lock.** From April 2030 the State Pension rises each year by the highest of 2.5%, inflation, or the amount needed to keep its value relative to earnings as reached in April 2029. The government estimates this reduces State Pension spending by £15 billion a year by the late 2030s. We analyse it [separately](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/uk-triple-lock-budget-2026). +- **The National Living Wage** rises 3.9% to £13.21 an hour on 1 April 2027, as the Low Pay Commission recommended. +- **The Bank Corporation Tax Surcharge** rises from 3% to 6% from 1 January 2027 to 31 March 2028, to help fund the energy support. +- Smaller tax and benefit changes for households, with their official costings in Table 2. + +**Table 2: Other household measures we don't model, official costings (£ million)** + +| Measure (Table 6.1 row) | What changes | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | +| ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | +| Student loans (83) | Interest on Plan 2 and Plan 3 loans capped at 6% from 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2027 | −230 | −170 | −10 | −10 | −5 | −15 | +| Universal Credit (8) | The £2,500 surplus earnings threshold kept for a year from 1 April 2027 | 0 | −140 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| Mileage rates (5) | 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles from April 2026; 35p above that from April 2027 | −30 | −200 | −220 | −225 | −235 | −245 | +| Bus fares (4) | Single fares capped at £2 in England outside London for 2027, funded by reprioritising DESNZ budgets, which the costing includes | −50 | −180 | +65 | +170 | 0 | 0 | +| Cash ISAs (11) | The cash ISA limit stays at £20,000 | 0 | −5 | −20 | −35 | −50 | −70 | +| Lifetime ISA (39) | Withdrawal charge cut from 25% to 20% for first-time buyers of homes above the £450,000 price cap | −15 | −20 | −20 | −25 | −25 | −25 | +| Founders' Relief (26) | A new Capital Gains Tax relief for qualifying founders, from April 2027 | 0 | −260 | −180 | −260 | −285 | −300 | +| Business Asset Disposal Relief (60) | Lifetime limit cut from £1 million to £500,000 from April 2027 | +5 | +60 | +180 | +255 | +280 | +305 | +| Distributions (49) | Fewer ways for shareholders to take profits out of a company as capital gains where dividend tax fits better, from April 2028 | 0 | 0 | +55 | +800 | +775 | +785 | +| Private hire VAT (59) | Larger operators pay VAT on the full fare from 2 January 2028 | 0 | +95 | +385 | +395 | +410 | +425 | +| Company car tax (86) | Benefit-in-kind rates for 2030-31 set 1 point above 2029-30 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +310 | +345 | + +Source: HM Treasury, [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026) of Budget 2026. A negative number is a cost to the public finances. + +## The combined effect + +We run the seven measures together as one package, in a single simulation for each year. The savings income rate rise is left out until our estimate is ready. + +### Cost to the public finances + +The package costs £3.11 billion in 2026-27, almost all of it the energy payment, the VAT cut and the fuel duty cut. In 2027-28 the VAT and fuel duty cuts run to July, and the property income rate rise begins. From 2028-29 the property income rise outweighs the Pension Tax Allowance and the trading allowance, and the package raises money. + +**Table 3: Budgetary impact of the seven measures (£ million)** + +| | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | +| ------------------------------------- | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | +| PolicyEngine, the package | −3,110 | −615 | +210 | +166 | +301 | +281 | +| Official, the same seven measures | −3,955 | −1,095 | +260 | +120 | +280 | +180 | + +Official: the sum of rows 1, 2, 3, 7, 15, 52 and 61 of the Budget's [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026). A negative number is a cost to the public finances. The package differs from the sum of the seven measures run one at a time by less than £1 million in every year. We explain the differences from the official costings [below](#how-our-estimates-compare-with-the-official-costings). + +### Household net income by income decile + +In 2026-27 the package raises net income in every decile, and by more as a share of income lower down the distribution. The energy payment is a flat £100, worth £68 to £73 per household on average in each of the bottom eight deciles and £47 in the highest, and the VAT and fuel duty cuts are also larger as a share of income for lower-income households. In 2027-28 every decile but the highest still gains. From 2028-29 the changes are small; in 2029-30 the top four deciles lose on average, the highest most, as property income tax rises. + +```chart +{ + "type": "bar", + "title": "Change in household net income by income decile", + "xKey": "decile", + "series": [ + { "key": "y2026", "name": "2026-27", "color": "primary" }, + { "key": "y2027", "name": "2027-28", "color": "tertiary" }, + { "key": "y2029", "name": "2029-30", "color": "quinary" } + ], + "data": [ + { "decile": "1", "y2026": 0.41, "y2027": 0.09, "y2029": 0.02 }, + { "decile": "2", "y2026": 0.27, "y2027": 0.06, "y2029": 0.01 }, + { "decile": "3", "y2026": 0.24, "y2027": 0.05, "y2029": 0.01 }, + { "decile": "4", "y2026": 0.23, "y2027": 0.05, "y2029": 0.00 }, + { "decile": "5", "y2026": 0.20, "y2027": 0.05, "y2029": 0.00 }, + { "decile": "6", "y2026": 0.19, "y2027": 0.05, "y2029": 0.01 }, + { "decile": "7", "y2026": 0.17, "y2027": 0.05, "y2029": 0.00 }, + { "decile": "8", "y2026": 0.15, "y2027": 0.04, "y2029": -0.01 }, + { "decile": "9", "y2026": 0.12, "y2027": 0.02, "y2029": -0.02 }, + { "decile": "10", "y2026": 0.06, "y2027": -0.01, "y2029": -0.03 } + ], + "yLabel": "Change in net income (%)", + "format": { "decimals": 2, "suffix": "%" }, + "source": "PolicyEngine UK microsimulation, Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard" +} +``` + +**Table 4: Average change in household net income by income decile (£ a year)** + +| Income decile | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2029-30 | +| ------------- | ------: | ------: | ------: | +| 1 (lowest) | +104 | +24 | +6 | +| 2 | +107 | +23 | +6 | +| 3 | +107 | +22 | +6 | +| 4 | +109 | +23 | +2 | +| 5 | +108 | +27 | +1 | +| 6 | +108 | +29 | +4 | +| 7 | +109 | +30 | −3 | +| 8 | +110 | +27 | −6 | +| 9 | +107 | +17 | −21 | +| 10 (highest) | +98 | −12 | −51 | +| All | +107 | +21 | −6 | + +Households are ranked into deciles by their income adjusted for household size, before housing costs, with each decile holding a tenth of people. + +The Treasury's own [distributional analysis](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026), which covers more of the Budget's measures, including public services, finds that in 2027-28 the lowest-income households gain most as a share of income, that tax rises are concentrated on the highest-income households, and that on average all but the top 20% of households gain. + +### Winners and losers + +**Table 5: Share of people by the change in their household's net income** + +| | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | +| ----------------------- | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | +| Gain | 98.6% | 90.0% | 3.4% | 3.9% | 1.2% | 1.2% | +| Lose | 0.0% | 4.7% | 5.6% | 5.6% | 5.8% | 5.7% | +| No change | 1.4% | 5.3% | 91.1% | 90.5% | 93.0% | 93.0% | + +A household gains or loses when its net income changes by more than 0.01%. + +In 2026-27 almost everyone gains, from the energy measures. From 2028-29 more than nine in ten people live in households the package leaves unchanged. The losses come almost entirely from the property income rate rise, and the gains from the Pension Tax Allowance, to 2029-30, and the trading allowance. + +### Poverty and inequality + +The package changes poverty by less than 0.05 percentage points in every year, on each of the eight measures we publish: absolute and relative poverty, before and after housing costs, for all people and for children. In 2026-27 it doesn't change poverty at all. Following the official Households Below Average Income statistics, our poverty measures count income after direct taxes, so cuts to VAT and fuel duty don't enter them; and we leave the energy payment out of that income, as we do the 2022 council tax rebate through which our model pays it. + +The Gini index of income inequality falls by 0.17% in 2026-27 and by 0.05% in 2027-28, and by 0.03% or less in each later year. + +## Measure by measure + +**Household Energy Payment.** A one-off £100 for households in council tax bands A to D in England, paid from January 2027. We estimate it costs £1,969 million in 2026-27, which at £100 each is 19.7 million households; the government says up to 20 million. It raises net income by £67 per UK household on average. [Our analysis of the energy bill measures](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/budget-2026-energy-bills) has the details. + +**Zero VAT on household electricity.** The 0% rate runs to 1 July 2027, and is expected to apply in Northern Ireland from April 2027. Like the Treasury, we cost the whole period, the months already in force this winter included: £840 million in 2026-27 and £353 million in 2027-28. In 2026-27 it raises net income by £29 per household on average, and 93.8% of people live in households that gain. See [our energy bills analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/budget-2026-energy-bills). + +**Fuel duty.** The 5p cut now runs to 1 July 2027, and the RPI rise planned for April 2027 moves to the same day. We estimate it costs £301 million in 2026-27 and £521 million in 2027-28, including the VAT on the lower pump price. In 2027-28 it raises net income by £18 per household on average. See [our fuel duty analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/fuel-duty-cut-extension). + +**Pension Tax Allowance.** From 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030, pensioners whose total income is no more than the full new State Pension pay no income tax; in 2027-28 the allowance is worth up to £94, and above that income it falls by £1 for every £3. We estimate a net cost of £30 million in 2027-28, £83 million in 2028-29 and £144 million in 2029-30, after lower spending on Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction. 2.8% of people live in households that gain in 2029-30. See [our Pension Tax Allowance analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/pension-tax-allowance). + +**Property income tax.** From 6 April 2027 the rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We estimate it raises £399 million in 2027-28, rising to £459 million in 2031-32. In 2029-30, 5.8% of people live in households that lose, and the highest-income decile loses £62 a year on average. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/autumn-budget-2026). + +**Trading allowance.** From 6 April 2027 the first £3,000 of trading and miscellaneous income each year is tax-free, up from £1,000. We estimate it costs £110 million in 2027-28, rising to £130 million in 2031-32. About 0.9% of people live in households that gain. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/autumn-budget-2026). + +**Carer's Allowance taper.** Today a carer who earns more than the weekly earnings limit loses all of Carer's Allowance. During 2030-31, once a new IT system is in place, carers in England and Wales will instead keep the allowance less £1 for each £1 earned above the limit. We count half of 2030-31 and estimate a cost of £24 million that year and £48 million in 2031-32. The Budget puts the number of carers helped at around 48,000. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/autumn-budget-2026). + +## How our estimates compare with the official costings + +Our estimates differ from the official costings for four main reasons: when tax is counted (we score each tax year's liability; the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year), coverage (we use household survey data, so effects outside households, and on incomes the survey records thinly, are estimated less fully in ours), behaviour (ours are static; most official costings include responses) and scope (the parts of a policy each models). + +**Table 6: PolicyEngine and official costings by measure (£ million)** + +| Measure | | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | +| ------------------------- | ------------ | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | +| Household Energy Payment | PolicyEngine | −1,969 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| | Official | −2,625 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| Zero VAT on electricity | PolicyEngine | −840 | −353 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| | Official | −755 | −305 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| Fuel duty | PolicyEngine | −301 | −521 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| | Official | −575 | −780 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| Pension Tax Allowance | PolicyEngine | 0 | −30 | −83 | −144 | 0 | 0 | +| | Official | 0 | −45 | −90 | −150 | +50 | −15 | +| Property income tax | PolicyEngine | 0 | +399 | +412 | +429 | +446 | +459 | +| | Official | 0 | +35 | +575 | +435 | +445 | +455 | +| Trading allowance | PolicyEngine | 0 | −110 | −118 | −119 | −120 | −130 | +| | Official | 0 | 0 | −225 | −165 | −175 | −180 | +| Carer's Allowance taper | PolicyEngine | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | −24 | −48 | +| | Official | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | −40 | −80 | + +Official: HM Treasury, [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026), rows 1, 2, 3, 52, 61, 15 and 7. + +Why each differs: + +- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours is 25% below the official £2,625 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the £100 payments in England, and ours is 94% of that; the Budget doesn't itemise the remaining £130 million or so. +- **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours is £85 million (11%) higher in 2026-27 and £48 million (16%) higher in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours is household spending from survey data, calibrated to meter records and grown with CPI, while the official costing uses ONS consumer spending grown with the OBR's forecast for electricity spending, and names the size of this base as its main uncertainty. +- **Fuel duty (coverage).** Ours is £274 million lower in 2026-27 and £259 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, about £13 billion of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy. Scaled to the OBR's fuel duty receipts, our fuel duty cost would be about £450 million in 2026-27 and £760 million in 2027-28. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes £50 million and £87 million of VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. After scaling, about £125 million of the 2026-27 gap has no explanation in the published documents. +- **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Ours is the net cost to the government, after lower spending, mostly on Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction (£12 million, £29 million and £48 million), as pensioners' income after tax rises. Our income tax cut alone is £42 million, £112 million and £193 million, against the official £45 million, £90 million and £150 million. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance at £182 and £250 a year, from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The Budget documents don't explain the official figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32, after the allowance ends; ours are zero. +- **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing counts tax when it is paid: the OBR adds less than £0.05 billion of Self Assessment receipts from the savings and property rate rises in 2027-28 and £1.0 billion in 2028-29, so those two years aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours is within 1.5% of the official costing every year. The official costing takes off about £0.1 billion a year for landlords incorporating and lower compliance, which ours leaves out, so before behaviour ours is about £0.1 billion a year lower. +- **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours is £46 million to £107 million a year below the official costing, with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain. In 2027-28 the official costing has nothing and ours has a cost; the difference in when tax is counted is the likely reason (our inference: tax on 2027-28 trading income through Self Assessment falls in a later year). +- **Carer's Allowance taper (scope and behaviour).** Ours is about 60% of the official costing in both years. The gap is close to the income tax on the higher allowance, which our net cost subtracts (£15 million and £32 million): before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million. The official figure also includes a labour-supply response, which ours does not, and our model does not count the income tax collected on the allowance through PAYE against Universal Credit earnings, which makes its Universal Credit saving larger. + +## Savings income + +From 6 April 2027 the income tax rates on savings income rise 2 points, on top of the rise in Budget 2025, to 24%, 44% and 49% across the UK. Interest in ISAs stays tax-free, and the Personal Savings Allowance and the starting rate for savings are unchanged. + +**Table 7: Official costing of the savings income rate rise (£ million)** + +| | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | +| ---------------------------- | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | +| Official (Table 6.1, row 62) | +15 | +125 | +555 | +520 | +555 | +590 | + +The official costing includes some savers moving their savings into ISAs and other tax-advantaged products. Our estimate is held back from this release while we update the savings income in our data, and follows with that update. + +## Methodology + +Our estimates come from PolicyEngine's [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/autumn-budget-2026), which runs the `policyengine` Python package (version 6.11.1) with PolicyEngine UK (version 2.151.0) on Microcosm UK 2024-25, our survey-based dataset calibrated before the Budget. Prices and earnings follow the OBR's [October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/): every simulation, with and without the Budget's measures, uses its growth rates for CPI, RPI, average earnings and house prices. + +- **Static.** Each estimate holds behaviour fixed: people work, earn, save and spend as they would without the measure. +- **Tax years.** We score each tax year's liability, and put costs and gains in the fiscal year they relate to; the energy payment, for example, falls in 2026-27. +- **Net income.** Changes in household net income are after the VAT and fuel duty households pay, so a cut to either raises net income. Deciles rank households by income adjusted for household size, before housing costs, with each decile holding a tenth of people. +- **The package.** The combined results are one simulation of the seven measures together, each modelled exactly as in its own run. +- **Small samples.** The dashboard withholds any result that rests on fewer than three survey households. For the package in 2030-31 and 2031-32, it withholds the results for two income deciles and the average change across all households, the same cells it withholds for the Carer's Allowance taper on its own. + +Every PolicyEngine figure in this briefing comes from the dashboard's published results (manifest revision 43), each read from files that match the checksums in their receipt. Every official figure comes from the Budget documents linked above. + +_PolicyEngine's UK Budget analysis is funded by the [Nuffield Foundation](https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/). The views expressed are ours and not necessarily the Foundation's._ diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/posts.json b/app/src/data/posts/posts.json index 851ca1dfe..a76b2b32f 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/posts.json +++ b/app/src/data/posts/posts.json @@ -1,4 +1,13 @@ [ + { + "title": "Autumn Budget 2026: our briefing on what it means for households", + "description": "The seven household measures we model cost \u00a33.11 billion in 2026-27 and raise net income by \u00a3107 per household on average that year. From 2028-29 they raise \u00a3166 million to \u00a3301 million a year, as property income tax rates rise.", + "date": "2026-10-29 07:00:00", + "tags": ["uk", "autumn-budget", "policy", "featured"], + "authors": ["max-ghenis", "vahid-ahmadi", "maria-juaristi"], + "filename": "uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md", + "image": "uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing/cover.webp" + }, { "title": "The fuel duty cut extension in the Autumn Budget 2026", "description": "The Budget keeps fuel duty at 52.95p a litre to 30 June 2027. We show how the duty and VAT on each litre change, and what this means for households by the fuel they use.", From 057500905949f4ff8f182fc9bb1cfb320c97c0f8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 15:24:07 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 02/21] Attribute the comparison notes' own figures to the dashboard's runs Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index 0fa9fe616..5a137110e 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -182,7 +182,7 @@ Our estimates differ from the official costings for four main reasons: when tax Official: HM Treasury, [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026), rows 1, 2, 3, 52, 61, 15 and 7. -Why each differs: +Why each differs, in the dashboard's own notes, written on Budget day from our runs of each measure and the Budget documents (figures in them that are not in Table 6 come from those runs): - **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours is 25% below the official £2,625 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the £100 payments in England, and ours is 94% of that; the Budget doesn't itemise the remaining £130 million or so. - **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours is £85 million (11%) higher in 2026-27 and £48 million (16%) higher in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours is household spending from survey data, calibrated to meter records and grown with CPI, while the official costing uses ONS consumer spending grown with the OBR's forecast for electricity spending, and names the size of this base as its main uncertainty. From 96f76770f3b677eb591706ee0df795e6cb25ab4f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 15:32:52 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 03/21] Briefing: cut run-only figures from the comparison notes, add scope lines Dashboard links move to /uk/budgets/autumn-2026. The "why each differs" bullets keep each reason from uk-autumn-budget-dashboard-2026#296 and drop the figures that came from the seats' own runs (#296 is still a draft); derived gaps (manifest less Table 6.1) and official figures stay. Adds the PTA gaps by year, the trading allowance's 2027-28 gap as a labelled inference, one line on the package's scope beside the decile and average-household figures, and drops the description of what the Treasury's distributional analysis covers until it is verified. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- .../uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 32 ++++++++++--------- 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+), 15 deletions(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index 5a137110e..5e995552f 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -In the Budget on 28 October 2026, the Chancellor [announced](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/budget-2026-document/budget-2026-html) support with energy bills this winter, a Pension Tax Allowance, higher tax rates on property and savings income, and a larger trading allowance, among other measures. This briefing sets out what the seven measures for households in our [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/autumn-budget-2026) do together and one by one, how our estimates compare with the official costings, and which measures we don't yet model. +In the Budget on 28 October 2026, the Chancellor [announced](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/budget-2026-document/budget-2026-html) support with energy bills this winter, a Pension Tax Allowance, higher tax rates on property and savings income, and a larger trading allowance, among other measures. This briefing sets out what the seven measures for households in our [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026) do together and one by one, how our estimates compare with the official costings, and which measures we don't yet model. Key results, from PolicyEngine's static microsimulation: @@ -8,7 +8,9 @@ Key results, from PolicyEngine's static microsimulation: - The highest-income decile loses £50 a year on average in 2028-29, rising to £56 in 2031-32, as property income tax rates rise. - The package changes poverty by less than 0.05 percentage points in every year, on every poverty measure we publish. -_[Use PolicyEngine's Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/autumn-budget-2026) to explore the results by measure, year and household, or to calculate the effect on your own household._ +These figures cover only the seven measures we model, listed in Table 1, and none of the Budget's other measures. + +_[Use PolicyEngine's Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026) to explore the results by measure, year and household, or to calculate the effect on your own household._ ## What the Budget does for households @@ -117,9 +119,9 @@ In 2026-27 the package raises net income in every decile, and by more as a share | 10 (highest) | +98 | −12 | −51 | | All | +107 | +21 | −6 | -Households are ranked into deciles by their income adjusted for household size, before housing costs, with each decile holding a tenth of people. +Households are ranked into deciles by their income adjusted for household size, before housing costs, with each decile holding a tenth of people. The chart and Table 4 cover only the seven measures in Table 1, and none of the Budget's other measures. -The Treasury's own [distributional analysis](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026), which covers more of the Budget's measures, including public services, finds that in 2027-28 the lowest-income households gain most as a share of income, that tax rises are concentrated on the highest-income households, and that on average all but the top 20% of households gain. +The Treasury's own [distributional analysis](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026) finds that in 2027-28 the lowest-income households gain most as a share of income, that tax rises are concentrated on the highest-income households, and that on average all but the top 20% of households gain. ### Winners and losers @@ -151,11 +153,11 @@ The Gini index of income inequality falls by 0.17% in 2026-27 and by 0.05% in 20 **Pension Tax Allowance.** From 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030, pensioners whose total income is no more than the full new State Pension pay no income tax; in 2027-28 the allowance is worth up to £94, and above that income it falls by £1 for every £3. We estimate a net cost of £30 million in 2027-28, £83 million in 2028-29 and £144 million in 2029-30, after lower spending on Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction. 2.8% of people live in households that gain in 2029-30. See [our Pension Tax Allowance analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/pension-tax-allowance). -**Property income tax.** From 6 April 2027 the rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We estimate it raises £399 million in 2027-28, rising to £459 million in 2031-32. In 2029-30, 5.8% of people live in households that lose, and the highest-income decile loses £62 a year on average. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/autumn-budget-2026). +**Property income tax.** From 6 April 2027 the rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We estimate it raises £399 million in 2027-28, rising to £459 million in 2031-32. In 2029-30, 5.8% of people live in households that lose, and the highest-income decile loses £62 a year on average. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). -**Trading allowance.** From 6 April 2027 the first £3,000 of trading and miscellaneous income each year is tax-free, up from £1,000. We estimate it costs £110 million in 2027-28, rising to £130 million in 2031-32. About 0.9% of people live in households that gain. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/autumn-budget-2026). +**Trading allowance.** From 6 April 2027 the first £3,000 of trading and miscellaneous income each year is tax-free, up from £1,000. We estimate it costs £110 million in 2027-28, rising to £130 million in 2031-32. About 0.9% of people live in households that gain. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). -**Carer's Allowance taper.** Today a carer who earns more than the weekly earnings limit loses all of Carer's Allowance. During 2030-31, once a new IT system is in place, carers in England and Wales will instead keep the allowance less £1 for each £1 earned above the limit. We count half of 2030-31 and estimate a cost of £24 million that year and £48 million in 2031-32. The Budget puts the number of carers helped at around 48,000. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/autumn-budget-2026). +**Carer's Allowance taper.** Today a carer who earns more than the weekly earnings limit loses all of Carer's Allowance. During 2030-31, once a new IT system is in place, carers in England and Wales will instead keep the allowance less £1 for each £1 earned above the limit. We count half of 2030-31 and estimate a cost of £24 million that year and £48 million in 2031-32. The Budget puts the number of carers helped at around 48,000. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). ## How our estimates compare with the official costings @@ -182,15 +184,15 @@ Our estimates differ from the official costings for four main reasons: when tax Official: HM Treasury, [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026), rows 1, 2, 3, 52, 61, 15 and 7. -Why each differs, in the dashboard's own notes, written on Budget day from our runs of each measure and the Budget documents (figures in them that are not in Table 6 come from those runs): +Why each differs, from the dashboard's notes on its comparison with the official costings: -- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours is 25% below the official £2,625 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the £100 payments in England, and ours is 94% of that; the Budget doesn't itemise the remaining £130 million or so. +- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours is 25% below the official £2,625 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding, which they receive through the Barnett formula, and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. - **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours is £85 million (11%) higher in 2026-27 and £48 million (16%) higher in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours is household spending from survey data, calibrated to meter records and grown with CPI, while the official costing uses ONS consumer spending grown with the OBR's forecast for electricity spending, and names the size of this base as its main uncertainty. -- **Fuel duty (coverage).** Ours is £274 million lower in 2026-27 and £259 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, about £13 billion of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy. Scaled to the OBR's fuel duty receipts, our fuel duty cost would be about £450 million in 2026-27 and £760 million in 2027-28. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes £50 million and £87 million of VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. After scaling, about £125 million of the 2026-27 gap has no explanation in the published documents. -- **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Ours is the net cost to the government, after lower spending, mostly on Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction (£12 million, £29 million and £48 million), as pensioners' income after tax rises. Our income tax cut alone is £42 million, £112 million and £193 million, against the official £45 million, £90 million and £150 million. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance at £182 and £250 a year, from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The Budget documents don't explain the official figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32, after the allowance ends; ours are zero. -- **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing counts tax when it is paid: the OBR adds less than £0.05 billion of Self Assessment receipts from the savings and property rate rises in 2027-28 and £1.0 billion in 2028-29, so those two years aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours is within 1.5% of the official costing every year. The official costing takes off about £0.1 billion a year for landlords incorporating and lower compliance, which ours leaves out, so before behaviour ours is about £0.1 billion a year lower. -- **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours is £46 million to £107 million a year below the official costing, with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain. In 2027-28 the official costing has nothing and ours has a cost; the difference in when tax is counted is the likely reason (our inference: tax on 2027-28 trading income through Self Assessment falls in a later year). -- **Carer's Allowance taper (scope and behaviour).** Ours is about 60% of the official costing in both years. The gap is close to the income tax on the higher allowance, which our net cost subtracts (£15 million and £32 million): before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million. The official figure also includes a labour-supply response, which ours does not, and our model does not count the income tax collected on the allowance through PAYE against Universal Credit earnings, which makes its Universal Credit saving larger. +- **Fuel duty (coverage).** Ours is £274 million lower in 2026-27 and £259 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy, out of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes the VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. +- **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Ours is £15 million (34%) below the official costing in 2027-28, £7 million (8%) below in 2028-29 and £6 million (4%) below in 2029-30. Ours is the net cost to the government, after lower spending, mostly on Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction, as pensioners' income after tax rises. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The Budget documents don't explain the official figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32, after the allowance ends; ours are zero. +- **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year than the one it's owed for, so its figures for 2027-28 and 2028-29 aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours is within 1.5% of the official costing every year. The official costing also allows for some landlords incorporating to avoid the rise, which ours leaves out. +- **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours is £46 million to £107 million a year below the official costing, with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain. In 2027-28 the official costing has no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard's note doesn't cover that year; our inference is the timing reason above, as the official costing can count tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year. +- **Carer's Allowance taper (scope and behaviour).** Ours is about 60% of the official costing in both years. The gap is close to the income tax on the higher allowance, which our net cost subtracts. The official figure also includes a labour-supply response, which ours does not, and our model does not count the income tax collected on the allowance through PAYE against Universal Credit earnings, which makes its Universal Credit saving larger. ## Savings income @@ -206,7 +208,7 @@ The official costing includes some savers moving their savings into ISAs and oth ## Methodology -Our estimates come from PolicyEngine's [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/autumn-budget-2026), which runs the `policyengine` Python package (version 6.11.1) with PolicyEngine UK (version 2.151.0) on Microcosm UK 2024-25, our survey-based dataset calibrated before the Budget. Prices and earnings follow the OBR's [October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/): every simulation, with and without the Budget's measures, uses its growth rates for CPI, RPI, average earnings and house prices. +Our estimates come from PolicyEngine's [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026), which runs the `policyengine` Python package (version 6.11.1) with PolicyEngine UK (version 2.151.0) on Microcosm UK 2024-25, our survey-based dataset calibrated before the Budget. Prices and earnings follow the OBR's [October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/): every simulation, with and without the Budget's measures, uses its growth rates for CPI, RPI, average earnings and house prices. - **Static.** Each estimate holds behaviour fixed: people work, earn, save and spend as they would without the measure. - **Tax years.** We score each tax year's liability, and put costs and gains in the fiscal year they relate to; the energy payment, for example, falls in 2026-27. From 3b95084fad7b218b1ace6b7871e1c82eddc25988 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 15:37:02 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 04/21] Briefing: drop the decile chart's value labels, which overlap Three series of ten bars put the labels on top of each other at the top deciles; the tooltip and Table 4 give the values. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 1 + 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index 5e995552f..aa3c510dd 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -99,6 +99,7 @@ In 2026-27 the package raises net income in every decile, and by more as a share ], "yLabel": "Change in net income (%)", "format": { "decimals": 2, "suffix": "%" }, + "valueLabels": false, "source": "PolicyEngine UK microsimulation, Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard" } ``` From 5cfcf243a7a65531470b238fc04e6fe0af72d8cc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 15:40:45 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 05/21] Briefing: answer review r1 and the coordinator's rulings - Say plainly that the figures are provisional (key results, provenance line and card description); the checker ties this to manifest status. - The energy payment and fuel duty notes keep their unexplained remainders, without the run-only figures. - Net income: changes include changes in VAT and fuel duty; deciles use the HBAI definition and hold about a tenth of people. - Company car rates are capped at 40%; Table 1 drops the fuel duty rate. - The Treasury's 2027-28 analysis: which measures it covers, as verified against its paragraph 1.4. - People shares rounded (about 94%, 3%, 6% and 1%), from the age table. - PTA 2030-31 and 2031-32: the Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for the official figures. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- .../uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 28 +++++++++---------- app/src/data/posts/posts.json | 2 +- 2 files changed, 15 insertions(+), 15 deletions(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index aa3c510dd..4601e73e7 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@ In the Budget on 28 October 2026, the Chancellor [announced](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/budget-2026-document/budget-2026-html) support with energy bills this winter, a Pension Tax Allowance, higher tax rates on property and savings income, and a larger trading allowance, among other measures. This briefing sets out what the seven measures for households in our [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026) do together and one by one, how our estimates compare with the official costings, and which measures we don't yet model. -Key results, from PolicyEngine's static microsimulation: +Key results, from PolicyEngine's static microsimulation (provisional figures, which may change as we finish checking them): - The seven measures cost £3.11 billion in 2026-27 and £0.61 billion in 2027-28. From 2028-29 they raise money: £0.21 billion in 2028-29, and between £0.17 billion and £0.30 billion a year to 2031-32. - In 2026-27 they raise household net income by £107 a year on average. Every income decile gains between £98 and £110, so the gain is 0.41% of net income in the lowest-income decile and 0.06% in the highest. @@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ _[Use PolicyEngine's Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/ | ------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------- | | Household Energy Payment | A one-off £100 for households in council tax bands A to D in England | Paid from January 2027 | | Zero VAT on electricity | The 0% rate on household electricity, in force in Great Britain since 1 October 2026, is extended by three months | To 1 July 2027 | -| Fuel duty | The 5p cut, which holds the main rate at 52.95p a litre, is extended, and the April 2027 RPI rise moves to 1 July 2027 | To 1 July 2027 | +| Fuel duty | The 5p cut is extended, and the April 2027 RPI rise moves to 1 July 2027 | To 1 July 2027 | | Pension Tax Allowance | An income tax reduction for people over State Pension age whose total income is at most the full new State Pension, tapered above it | 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030 | | Property income tax | Rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland | From 6 April 2027 | | Trading allowance | Rises from £1,000 to £3,000 | From 6 April 2027 | @@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ The Budget makes other changes that reach households, which our dashboard does n | Business Asset Disposal Relief (60) | Lifetime limit cut from £1 million to £500,000 from April 2027 | +5 | +60 | +180 | +255 | +280 | +305 | | Distributions (49) | Fewer ways for shareholders to take profits out of a company as capital gains where dividend tax fits better, from April 2028 | 0 | 0 | +55 | +800 | +775 | +785 | | Private hire VAT (59) | Larger operators pay VAT on the full fare from 2 January 2028 | 0 | +95 | +385 | +395 | +410 | +425 | -| Company car tax (86) | Benefit-in-kind rates for 2030-31 set 1 point above 2029-30 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +310 | +345 | +| Company car tax (86) | Benefit-in-kind rates for 2030-31 set 1 point above 2029-30, up to 40% | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +310 | +345 | Source: HM Treasury, [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026) of Budget 2026. A negative number is a cost to the public finances. @@ -120,9 +120,9 @@ In 2026-27 the package raises net income in every decile, and by more as a share | 10 (highest) | +98 | −12 | −51 | | All | +107 | +21 | −6 | -Households are ranked into deciles by their income adjusted for household size, before housing costs, with each decile holding a tenth of people. The chart and Table 4 cover only the seven measures in Table 1, and none of the Budget's other measures. +Households are ranked into deciles by their income under the Households Below Average Income definition, adjusted for household size and before housing costs, with each decile holding about a tenth of people. The chart and Table 4 cover only the seven measures in Table 1, and none of the Budget's other measures. -The Treasury's own [distributional analysis](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026) finds that in 2027-28 the lowest-income households gain most as a share of income, that tax rises are concentrated on the highest-income households, and that on average all but the top 20% of households gain. +The Treasury's [analysis](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026) of the Budget's effect on households in 2027-28 (its Figures 1.A and 1.B) covers 18 of the Budget's measures (paragraph 1.4). Five of them are among ours. It includes the savings income rate rise, which we leave out, and leaves out the Household Energy Payment and the Carer's Allowance change. So its decile figures cover a different set of policies from ours. It finds that in 2027-28 the lowest-income households gain most as a share of income, that tax rises are concentrated on the highest-income households, and that on average all but the top 20% of households gain. ### Winners and losers @@ -148,15 +148,15 @@ The Gini index of income inequality falls by 0.17% in 2026-27 and by 0.05% in 20 **Household Energy Payment.** A one-off £100 for households in council tax bands A to D in England, paid from January 2027. We estimate it costs £1,969 million in 2026-27, which at £100 each is 19.7 million households; the government says up to 20 million. It raises net income by £67 per UK household on average. [Our analysis of the energy bill measures](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/budget-2026-energy-bills) has the details. -**Zero VAT on household electricity.** The 0% rate runs to 1 July 2027, and is expected to apply in Northern Ireland from April 2027. Like the Treasury, we cost the whole period, the months already in force this winter included: £840 million in 2026-27 and £353 million in 2027-28. In 2026-27 it raises net income by £29 per household on average, and 93.8% of people live in households that gain. See [our energy bills analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/budget-2026-energy-bills). +**Zero VAT on household electricity.** The 0% rate runs to 1 July 2027, and is expected to apply in Northern Ireland from April 2027. Like the Treasury, we cost the whole period, the months already in force this winter included: £840 million in 2026-27 and £353 million in 2027-28. In 2026-27 it raises net income by £29 per household on average, and about 94% of people live in households that gain. See [our energy bills analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/budget-2026-energy-bills). **Fuel duty.** The 5p cut now runs to 1 July 2027, and the RPI rise planned for April 2027 moves to the same day. We estimate it costs £301 million in 2026-27 and £521 million in 2027-28, including the VAT on the lower pump price. In 2027-28 it raises net income by £18 per household on average. See [our fuel duty analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/fuel-duty-cut-extension). -**Pension Tax Allowance.** From 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030, pensioners whose total income is no more than the full new State Pension pay no income tax; in 2027-28 the allowance is worth up to £94, and above that income it falls by £1 for every £3. We estimate a net cost of £30 million in 2027-28, £83 million in 2028-29 and £144 million in 2029-30, after lower spending on Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction. 2.8% of people live in households that gain in 2029-30. See [our Pension Tax Allowance analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/pension-tax-allowance). +**Pension Tax Allowance.** From 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030, pensioners whose total income is no more than the full new State Pension pay no income tax; in 2027-28 the allowance is worth up to £94, and above that income it falls by £1 for every £3. We estimate a net cost of £30 million in 2027-28, £83 million in 2028-29 and £144 million in 2029-30, after lower spending on Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction. About 3% of people live in households that gain in 2029-30. See [our Pension Tax Allowance analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/pension-tax-allowance). -**Property income tax.** From 6 April 2027 the rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We estimate it raises £399 million in 2027-28, rising to £459 million in 2031-32. In 2029-30, 5.8% of people live in households that lose, and the highest-income decile loses £62 a year on average. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). +**Property income tax.** From 6 April 2027 the rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We estimate it raises £399 million in 2027-28, rising to £459 million in 2031-32. In 2029-30, about 6% of people live in households that lose, and the highest-income decile loses £62 a year on average. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). -**Trading allowance.** From 6 April 2027 the first £3,000 of trading and miscellaneous income each year is tax-free, up from £1,000. We estimate it costs £110 million in 2027-28, rising to £130 million in 2031-32. About 0.9% of people live in households that gain. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). +**Trading allowance.** From 6 April 2027 the first £3,000 of trading and miscellaneous income each year is tax-free, up from £1,000. We estimate it costs £110 million in 2027-28, rising to £130 million in 2031-32. About 1% of people live in households that gain. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). **Carer's Allowance taper.** Today a carer who earns more than the weekly earnings limit loses all of Carer's Allowance. During 2030-31, once a new IT system is in place, carers in England and Wales will instead keep the allowance less £1 for each £1 earned above the limit. We count half of 2030-31 and estimate a cost of £24 million that year and £48 million in 2031-32. The Budget puts the number of carers helped at around 48,000. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). @@ -187,10 +187,10 @@ Official: HM Treasury, [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/su Why each differs, from the dashboard's notes on its comparison with the official costings: -- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours is 25% below the official £2,625 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding, which they receive through the Barnett formula, and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. +- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours is 25% below the official £2,625 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding, which they receive through the Barnett formula, and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without those two, part of the gap remains, which the Budget doesn't itemise. - **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours is £85 million (11%) higher in 2026-27 and £48 million (16%) higher in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours is household spending from survey data, calibrated to meter records and grown with CPI, while the official costing uses ONS consumer spending grown with the OBR's forecast for electricity spending, and names the size of this base as its main uncertainty. -- **Fuel duty (coverage).** Ours is £274 million lower in 2026-27 and £259 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy, out of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes the VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. -- **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Ours is £15 million (34%) below the official costing in 2027-28, £7 million (8%) below in 2028-29 and £6 million (4%) below in 2029-30. Ours is the net cost to the government, after lower spending, mostly on Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction, as pensioners' income after tax rises. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The Budget documents don't explain the official figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32, after the allowance ends; ours are zero. +- **Fuel duty (coverage).** Ours is £274 million lower in 2026-27 and £259 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy, out of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes the VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. Scaling our household fuel duty up to the OBR's total still leaves part of the 2026-27 gap with no explanation in the published documents. +- **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Ours is £15 million (34%) below the official costing in 2027-28, £7 million (8%) below in 2028-29 and £6 million (4%) below in 2029-30. Ours is the net cost to the government, after lower spending, mostly on Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction, as pensioners' income after tax rises. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The official costing also has figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32. The Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for these figures after the allowance ends; ours are zero. - **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year than the one it's owed for, so its figures for 2027-28 and 2028-29 aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours is within 1.5% of the official costing every year. The official costing also allows for some landlords incorporating to avoid the rise, which ours leaves out. - **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours is £46 million to £107 million a year below the official costing, with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain. In 2027-28 the official costing has no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard's note doesn't cover that year; our inference is the timing reason above, as the official costing can count tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year. - **Carer's Allowance taper (scope and behaviour).** Ours is about 60% of the official costing in both years. The gap is close to the income tax on the higher allowance, which our net cost subtracts. The official figure also includes a labour-supply response, which ours does not, and our model does not count the income tax collected on the allowance through PAYE against Universal Credit earnings, which makes its Universal Credit saving larger. @@ -213,10 +213,10 @@ Our estimates come from PolicyEngine's [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://ww - **Static.** Each estimate holds behaviour fixed: people work, earn, save and spend as they would without the measure. - **Tax years.** We score each tax year's liability, and put costs and gains in the fiscal year they relate to; the energy payment, for example, falls in 2026-27. -- **Net income.** Changes in household net income are after the VAT and fuel duty households pay, so a cut to either raises net income. Deciles rank households by income adjusted for household size, before housing costs, with each decile holding a tenth of people. +- **Net income.** Changes in household net income include changes in the VAT and fuel duty households pay, so a cut to either raises net income. Deciles rank households by their income under the Households Below Average Income definition, adjusted for household size and before housing costs, with each decile holding about a tenth of people. - **The package.** The combined results are one simulation of the seven measures together, each modelled exactly as in its own run. - **Small samples.** The dashboard withholds any result that rests on fewer than three survey households. For the package in 2030-31 and 2031-32, it withholds the results for two income deciles and the average change across all households, the same cells it withholds for the Carer's Allowance taper on its own. -Every PolicyEngine figure in this briefing comes from the dashboard's published results (manifest revision 43), each read from files that match the checksums in their receipt. Every official figure comes from the Budget documents linked above. +Every PolicyEngine figure in this briefing comes from the dashboard's published results (manifest revision 43), which are provisional, each read from files that match the checksums in their receipt. Every official figure comes from the Budget documents linked above. _PolicyEngine's UK Budget analysis is funded by the [Nuffield Foundation](https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/). The views expressed are ours and not necessarily the Foundation's._ diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/posts.json b/app/src/data/posts/posts.json index a76b2b32f..967b218e7 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/posts.json +++ b/app/src/data/posts/posts.json @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ [ { "title": "Autumn Budget 2026: our briefing on what it means for households", - "description": "The seven household measures we model cost \u00a33.11 billion in 2026-27 and raise net income by \u00a3107 per household on average that year. From 2028-29 they raise \u00a3166 million to \u00a3301 million a year, as property income tax rates rise.", + "description": "On our provisional estimates, the seven household measures we model cost \u00a33.11 billion in 2026-27 and raise net income by \u00a3107 per household on average that year. From 2028-29 they raise \u00a3166 million to \u00a3301 million a year, as property income tax rates rise.", "date": "2026-10-29 07:00:00", "tags": ["uk", "autumn-budget", "policy", "featured"], "authors": ["max-ghenis", "vahid-ahmadi", "maria-juaristi"], From 335dd9d19334af15e762cc009be9698811ed3c41 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 15:42:38 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 06/21] Briefing: round the key results' people shares to whole per cent Prose shares are whole per cent (about 99%, 4% and 6%); Table 5 keeps one decimal. All come from the age table's "all" row. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index 4601e73e7..843180f68 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ Key results, from PolicyEngine's static microsimulation (provisional figures, wh - The seven measures cost £3.11 billion in 2026-27 and £0.61 billion in 2027-28. From 2028-29 they raise money: £0.21 billion in 2028-29, and between £0.17 billion and £0.30 billion a year to 2031-32. - In 2026-27 they raise household net income by £107 a year on average. Every income decile gains between £98 and £110, so the gain is 0.41% of net income in the lowest-income decile and 0.06% in the highest. -- 98.6% of people live in households that gain in 2026-27. In 2029-30, after the energy measures end, 3.9% of people live in households that gain and 5.6% in households that lose. +- About 99% of people live in households that gain in 2026-27. In 2029-30, after the energy measures end, about 4% of people live in households that gain and about 6% in households that lose. - The highest-income decile loses £50 a year on average in 2028-29, rising to £56 in 2031-32, as property income tax rates rise. - The package changes poverty by less than 0.05 percentage points in every year, on every poverty measure we publish. From 8cff37999daf3fd1e14a04feb85a8bc99b6f2d37 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 15:54:48 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 07/21] Briefing: answer review r2; name manifest revision 44 - Pension Tax Allowance: eligibility includes people reaching State Pension age during the tax year (the Treasury's explainer). - Revision 44 of the test publication changes only the flat summary files; every artifact the post uses is unchanged. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- .../data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 6 +++--- 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index 843180f68..3ba4e7cc8 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ _[Use PolicyEngine's Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/ | Household Energy Payment | A one-off £100 for households in council tax bands A to D in England | Paid from January 2027 | | Zero VAT on electricity | The 0% rate on household electricity, in force in Great Britain since 1 October 2026, is extended by three months | To 1 July 2027 | | Fuel duty | The 5p cut is extended, and the April 2027 RPI rise moves to 1 July 2027 | To 1 July 2027 | -| Pension Tax Allowance | An income tax reduction for people over State Pension age whose total income is at most the full new State Pension, tapered above it | 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030 | +| Pension Tax Allowance | An income tax reduction for people above State Pension age, or reaching it during the tax year, whose total income is at most the full new State Pension, tapered above it | 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030 | | Property income tax | Rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland | From 6 April 2027 | | Trading allowance | Rises from £1,000 to £3,000 | From 6 April 2027 | | Carer's Allowance taper | Above the weekly earnings limit, the allowance is withdrawn £1 for each £1 earned instead of all at once, in England and Wales | During 2030-31 | @@ -152,7 +152,7 @@ The Gini index of income inequality falls by 0.17% in 2026-27 and by 0.05% in 20 **Fuel duty.** The 5p cut now runs to 1 July 2027, and the RPI rise planned for April 2027 moves to the same day. We estimate it costs £301 million in 2026-27 and £521 million in 2027-28, including the VAT on the lower pump price. In 2027-28 it raises net income by £18 per household on average. See [our fuel duty analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/fuel-duty-cut-extension). -**Pension Tax Allowance.** From 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030, pensioners whose total income is no more than the full new State Pension pay no income tax; in 2027-28 the allowance is worth up to £94, and above that income it falls by £1 for every £3. We estimate a net cost of £30 million in 2027-28, £83 million in 2028-29 and £144 million in 2029-30, after lower spending on Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction. About 3% of people live in households that gain in 2029-30. See [our Pension Tax Allowance analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/pension-tax-allowance). +**Pension Tax Allowance.** From 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030, people above State Pension age, or reaching it during the tax year, whose total income is no more than the full new State Pension pay no income tax; in 2027-28 the allowance is worth up to £94, and above that income it falls by £1 for every £3. We estimate a net cost of £30 million in 2027-28, £83 million in 2028-29 and £144 million in 2029-30, after lower spending on Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction. About 3% of people live in households that gain in 2029-30. See [our Pension Tax Allowance analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/pension-tax-allowance). **Property income tax.** From 6 April 2027 the rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We estimate it raises £399 million in 2027-28, rising to £459 million in 2031-32. In 2029-30, about 6% of people live in households that lose, and the highest-income decile loses £62 a year on average. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). @@ -217,6 +217,6 @@ Our estimates come from PolicyEngine's [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://ww - **The package.** The combined results are one simulation of the seven measures together, each modelled exactly as in its own run. - **Small samples.** The dashboard withholds any result that rests on fewer than three survey households. For the package in 2030-31 and 2031-32, it withholds the results for two income deciles and the average change across all households, the same cells it withholds for the Carer's Allowance taper on its own. -Every PolicyEngine figure in this briefing comes from the dashboard's published results (manifest revision 43), which are provisional, each read from files that match the checksums in their receipt. Every official figure comes from the Budget documents linked above. +Every PolicyEngine figure in this briefing comes from the dashboard's published results (manifest revision 44), which are provisional, each read from files that match the checksums in their receipt. Every official figure comes from the Budget documents linked above. _PolicyEngine's UK Budget analysis is funded by the [Nuffield Foundation](https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/). The views expressed are ours and not necessarily the Foundation's._ From 28047bfbb1cf1bcd6a1eacd97047170d4c22e63f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 16:18:43 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 08/21] Briefing: restore the dashboard's comparison-note figures; release manifest revision 17 Each policy's "why it differs" bullet now carries the figures from the dashboard's notes as merged in #296 and #298 and rendered on its Public finances view (all seven, in every year): the HEP's Barnett share and unitemised remainder, the electricity VAT base, fuel duty's scaled cost and the 5p timing, the PTA's income tax cost and gainers, property's Self Assessment timing and incorporation, the trading allowance's percentages, and Carer's Allowance's income tax. The 2027-28 trading allowance gap now cites the comparison card's timing caveat instead of our inference. The figures follow release manifest revision 17, in which every entry is approved, so the provisional wording leaves the article and the card. Every figure matches revision 44's. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- .../uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 20 +++++++++---------- app/src/data/posts/posts.json | 2 +- 2 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index 3ba4e7cc8..b41f7efd4 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@ In the Budget on 28 October 2026, the Chancellor [announced](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/budget-2026-document/budget-2026-html) support with energy bills this winter, a Pension Tax Allowance, higher tax rates on property and savings income, and a larger trading allowance, among other measures. This briefing sets out what the seven measures for households in our [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026) do together and one by one, how our estimates compare with the official costings, and which measures we don't yet model. -Key results, from PolicyEngine's static microsimulation (provisional figures, which may change as we finish checking them): +Key results, from PolicyEngine's static microsimulation: - The seven measures cost £3.11 billion in 2026-27 and £0.61 billion in 2027-28. From 2028-29 they raise money: £0.21 billion in 2028-29, and between £0.17 billion and £0.30 billion a year to 2031-32. - In 2026-27 they raise household net income by £107 a year on average. Every income decile gains between £98 and £110, so the gain is 0.41% of net income in the lowest-income decile and 0.06% in the highest. @@ -185,15 +185,15 @@ Our estimates differ from the official costings for four main reasons: when tax Official: HM Treasury, [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026), rows 1, 2, 3, 52, 61, 15 and 7. -Why each differs, from the dashboard's notes on its comparison with the official costings: +Why each differs, from the [dashboard's notes](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026?tab=dashboard&sub=finances) on its comparison with the official costings. The notes also draw on further runs of our model and on the Budget documents, so some of their figures aren't in Table 3: -- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours is 25% below the official £2,625 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding, which they receive through the Barnett formula, and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without those two, part of the gap remains, which the Budget doesn't itemise. -- **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours is £85 million (11%) higher in 2026-27 and £48 million (16%) higher in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours is household spending from survey data, calibrated to meter records and grown with CPI, while the official costing uses ONS consumer spending grown with the OBR's forecast for electricity spending, and names the size of this base as its main uncertainty. -- **Fuel duty (coverage).** Ours is £274 million lower in 2026-27 and £259 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy, out of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes the VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. Scaling our household fuel duty up to the OBR's total still leaves part of the 2026-27 gap with no explanation in the published documents. -- **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Ours is £15 million (34%) below the official costing in 2027-28, £7 million (8%) below in 2028-29 and £6 million (4%) below in 2029-30. Ours is the net cost to the government, after lower spending, mostly on Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction, as pensioners' income after tax rises. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The official costing also has figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32. The Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for these figures after the allowance ends; ours are zero. -- **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year than the one it's owed for, so its figures for 2027-28 and 2028-29 aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours is within 1.5% of the official costing every year. The official costing also allows for some landlords incorporating to avoid the rise, which ours leaves out. -- **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours is £46 million to £107 million a year below the official costing, with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain. In 2027-28 the official costing has no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard's note doesn't cover that year; our inference is the timing reason above, as the official costing can count tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year. -- **Carer's Allowance taper (scope and behaviour).** Ours is about 60% of the official costing in both years. The gap is close to the income tax on the higher allowance, which our net cost subtracts. The official figure also includes a labour-supply response, which ours does not, and our model does not count the income tax collected on the allowance through PAYE against Universal Credit earnings, which makes its Universal Credit saving larger. +- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours is 25% below the official £2,625 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the £100 payments in England, and ours is 94% of that; the Budget doesn't itemise the remaining £130 million or so. +- **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours is £85 million (11%) higher in 2026-27 and £48 million (16%) higher in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's domestic electricity volumes at average prices paid, grown with CPI, and the official costing from ONS consumer spending, which is 10% to 12% lower. At that level our cost would be within about 4% of the official figure in both years. +- **Fuel duty (coverage).** Ours is £274 million lower in 2026-27 and £259 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, about £13 billion of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy. Scaled up to the OBR's fuel duty receipts, our fuel duty cost would be about £450 million in 2026-27 and £760 million in 2027-28. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes £50 million and £87 million of VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. The rest of the 2026-27 gap fits the official costing if it assumes the full 5p returns on 1 January 2027 (about £555 million on 45 billion litres), where the law brings it back as 3p then and 2p more from 1 March (about £410 million). +- **Pension Tax Allowance (scope and coverage).** The official costing counts income tax only. Our income tax cost is £42 million, £112 million and £193 million in 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30: in line with the official costing in 2027-28, and 25% and 29% higher in the next two years, because our data put more pensioners just above the personal allowance (about 670,000 gain in 2027-28, against the Treasury's 500,000). After Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction take back part of it, our net cost is £15 million (34%) below the official costing in 2027-28, £7 million (8%) below in 2028-29 and £6 million (4%) below in 2029-30. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance at £182 and £250 a year, from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The official costing also has figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32. The Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for these figures after the allowance ends; ours are zero. +- **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year than the one it's owed for: the OBR adds £0.0 billion (rounded) of Self Assessment receipts from the savings and property rate rises in 2027-28 and £1.0 billion in 2028-29, so the official figures for those two years aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours is within 1.5% of the official costing every year. The official costing takes off about £0.1 billion a year for landlords incorporating and lower compliance, which ours leaves out, so against the official costing before that behaviour, ours is about £0.1 billion a year lower. +- **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours is £46 million to £107 million a year below the official costing (28% to 47%), with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain, because we leave them unrelieved under the current £1,000 allowance. In 2027-28 the official costing has no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard gives the reason in its description of the comparison: the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year, so a change such as the trading allowance can appear about a year later in them than in ours. +- **Carer's Allowance taper (scope and behaviour).** Ours is about 60% of the official costing in both years: £24 million against £40 million in 2030-31, and £48 million against £80 million in 2031-32. The gap is close to the income tax on the higher allowance, which our net cost subtracts (£15 million and £32 million): before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million, and the official costing note describes Carer's Allowance spending and Universal Credit interactions without mentioning income tax. The official figure also includes a labour-supply response, which ours does not, and our model does not count the income tax collected on the allowance through PAYE against Universal Credit earnings, which makes its Universal Credit saving larger. ## Savings income @@ -217,6 +217,6 @@ Our estimates come from PolicyEngine's [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://ww - **The package.** The combined results are one simulation of the seven measures together, each modelled exactly as in its own run. - **Small samples.** The dashboard withholds any result that rests on fewer than three survey households. For the package in 2030-31 and 2031-32, it withholds the results for two income deciles and the average change across all households, the same cells it withholds for the Carer's Allowance taper on its own. -Every PolicyEngine figure in this briefing comes from the dashboard's published results (manifest revision 44), which are provisional, each read from files that match the checksums in their receipt. Every official figure comes from the Budget documents linked above. +Every PolicyEngine figure in this briefing comes from the dashboard's published results (manifest revision 17), each read from files that match the checksums in their receipt, except the further figures quoted from the dashboard's notes on the comparison with the official costings. Every official figure comes from the Budget documents linked above. _PolicyEngine's UK Budget analysis is funded by the [Nuffield Foundation](https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/). The views expressed are ours and not necessarily the Foundation's._ diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/posts.json b/app/src/data/posts/posts.json index 967b218e7..2c6dbbb11 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/posts.json +++ b/app/src/data/posts/posts.json @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ [ { "title": "Autumn Budget 2026: our briefing on what it means for households", - "description": "On our provisional estimates, the seven household measures we model cost \u00a33.11 billion in 2026-27 and raise net income by \u00a3107 per household on average that year. From 2028-29 they raise \u00a3166 million to \u00a3301 million a year, as property income tax rates rise.", + "description": "We estimate the seven household measures we model cost \u00a33.11 billion in 2026-27 and raise net income by \u00a3107 per household on average that year. From 2028-29 they raise \u00a3166 million to \u00a3301 million a year, as property income tax rates rise.", "date": "2026-10-29 07:00:00", "tags": ["uk", "autumn-budget", "policy", "featured"], "authors": ["max-ghenis", "vahid-ahmadi", "maria-juaristi"], From c2713f8fd03b61333e246b9dd0bdfe51734a8112 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 16:23:14 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 09/21] Briefing: hold poverty; give no reason for the PTA and Carer's Allowance gaps MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On the coordinator's cautions: - Poverty stays out until production is live and María has ruled on the unfloored poverty columns (dashboard #290); the key result and the poverty paragraph are held, and the section is now Inequality. - Carer's Allowance: the note's income tax reason is being corrected by its seat, so the bullet keeps our own figures (the tax on the higher allowance, and the cost before it) and gives no reason for the gap. - Pension Tax Allowance: the note's data reason may be dropped, so the bullet gives our income tax cost and gainers without it, and no longer says the official costing counts income tax only. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- .../posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 9 +++------ 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index b41f7efd4..e35714f82 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -6,7 +6,6 @@ Key results, from PolicyEngine's static microsimulation: - In 2026-27 they raise household net income by £107 a year on average. Every income decile gains between £98 and £110, so the gain is 0.41% of net income in the lowest-income decile and 0.06% in the highest. - About 99% of people live in households that gain in 2026-27. In 2029-30, after the energy measures end, about 4% of people live in households that gain and about 6% in households that lose. - The highest-income decile loses £50 a year on average in 2028-29, rising to £56 in 2031-32, as property income tax rates rise. -- The package changes poverty by less than 0.05 percentage points in every year, on every poverty measure we publish. These figures cover only the seven measures we model, listed in Table 1, and none of the Budget's other measures. @@ -138,9 +137,7 @@ A household gains or loses when its net income changes by more than 0.01%. In 2026-27 almost everyone gains, from the energy measures. From 2028-29 more than nine in ten people live in households the package leaves unchanged. The losses come almost entirely from the property income rate rise, and the gains from the Pension Tax Allowance, to 2029-30, and the trading allowance. -### Poverty and inequality - -The package changes poverty by less than 0.05 percentage points in every year, on each of the eight measures we publish: absolute and relative poverty, before and after housing costs, for all people and for children. In 2026-27 it doesn't change poverty at all. Following the official Households Below Average Income statistics, our poverty measures count income after direct taxes, so cuts to VAT and fuel duty don't enter them; and we leave the energy payment out of that income, as we do the 2022 council tax rebate through which our model pays it. +### Inequality The Gini index of income inequality falls by 0.17% in 2026-27 and by 0.05% in 2027-28, and by 0.03% or less in each later year. @@ -190,10 +187,10 @@ Why each differs, from the [dashboard's notes](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/b - **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours is 25% below the official £2,625 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the £100 payments in England, and ours is 94% of that; the Budget doesn't itemise the remaining £130 million or so. - **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours is £85 million (11%) higher in 2026-27 and £48 million (16%) higher in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's domestic electricity volumes at average prices paid, grown with CPI, and the official costing from ONS consumer spending, which is 10% to 12% lower. At that level our cost would be within about 4% of the official figure in both years. - **Fuel duty (coverage).** Ours is £274 million lower in 2026-27 and £259 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, about £13 billion of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy. Scaled up to the OBR's fuel duty receipts, our fuel duty cost would be about £450 million in 2026-27 and £760 million in 2027-28. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes £50 million and £87 million of VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. The rest of the 2026-27 gap fits the official costing if it assumes the full 5p returns on 1 January 2027 (about £555 million on 45 billion litres), where the law brings it back as 3p then and 2p more from 1 March (about £410 million). -- **Pension Tax Allowance (scope and coverage).** The official costing counts income tax only. Our income tax cost is £42 million, £112 million and £193 million in 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30: in line with the official costing in 2027-28, and 25% and 29% higher in the next two years, because our data put more pensioners just above the personal allowance (about 670,000 gain in 2027-28, against the Treasury's 500,000). After Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction take back part of it, our net cost is £15 million (34%) below the official costing in 2027-28, £7 million (8%) below in 2028-29 and £6 million (4%) below in 2029-30. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance at £182 and £250 a year, from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The official costing also has figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32. The Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for these figures after the allowance ends; ours are zero. +- **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Our income tax cost is £42 million, £112 million and £193 million in 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30: in line with the official costing in 2027-28, and 25% and 29% higher in the next two years. We estimate that about 670,000 people gain in 2027-28, against the Treasury's 500,000. After Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction take back part of it, our net cost is £15 million (34%) below the official costing in 2027-28, £7 million (8%) below in 2028-29 and £6 million (4%) below in 2029-30. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance at £182 and £250 a year, from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The official costing also has figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32. The Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for these figures after the allowance ends; ours are zero. - **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year than the one it's owed for: the OBR adds £0.0 billion (rounded) of Self Assessment receipts from the savings and property rate rises in 2027-28 and £1.0 billion in 2028-29, so the official figures for those two years aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours is within 1.5% of the official costing every year. The official costing takes off about £0.1 billion a year for landlords incorporating and lower compliance, which ours leaves out, so against the official costing before that behaviour, ours is about £0.1 billion a year lower. - **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours is £46 million to £107 million a year below the official costing (28% to 47%), with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain, because we leave them unrelieved under the current £1,000 allowance. In 2027-28 the official costing has no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard gives the reason in its description of the comparison: the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year, so a change such as the trading allowance can appear about a year later in them than in ours. -- **Carer's Allowance taper (scope and behaviour).** Ours is about 60% of the official costing in both years: £24 million against £40 million in 2030-31, and £48 million against £80 million in 2031-32. The gap is close to the income tax on the higher allowance, which our net cost subtracts (£15 million and £32 million): before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million, and the official costing note describes Carer's Allowance spending and Universal Credit interactions without mentioning income tax. The official figure also includes a labour-supply response, which ours does not, and our model does not count the income tax collected on the allowance through PAYE against Universal Credit earnings, which makes its Universal Credit saving larger. +- **Carer's Allowance taper.** Ours is about 60% of the official costing in both years: £24 million against £40 million in 2030-31, and £48 million against £80 million in 2031-32. Ours is net of the income tax on the higher allowance (£15 million and £32 million); before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million. We are still working through the reasons for the gap. ## Savings income From e2ba2d2d799725f399dffa825ec24b9bbaf35996 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 16:49:54 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 10/21] Briefing: compare with the OBR's matching lines, Table 6.1 as context MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Max's rule, relayed by the coordinator: cite the primary source. Each official figure is now the line in the OBR's detailed forecast table 1.1 that matches what we model (the government's costing, certified by the OBR; fuel duty is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify). Table 6.1's rounded totals stay as context rows in Tables 3, 6 and 7, and the note under Table 6 names the other lines by the table's labels. - VAT: 14% and 19% above the VAT line; the Table 6.1-based "within about 4%" is dropped. - Property: 9% to 11% above the income tax line from 2029-30; the behaviour and the Self Assessment timing now cite the EFO (paragraph 3.17, Table 4.4). - Trading: against income tax and NICs, 27% to 47% below. - HEP: against £2,627 million. - PTA: income tax against the OBR's income tax line (coordinator's text); the net-versus-Table 6.1 sentence is replaced. - Carer's Allowance: the OBR's breakdown (coordinator's text), then ours. - Intro to the reasons now says the notes use Table 6.1's totals, and points at Table 6 (Sol r3). The provenance line names the EFO (Sol r3). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- .../uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 163 ++++++++++-------- 1 file changed, 88 insertions(+), 75 deletions(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index e35714f82..1d8d20dff 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -15,15 +15,15 @@ _[Use PolicyEngine's Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/ **Table 1: The seven measures we model** -| Measure | What changes | When | -| ------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------- | -| Household Energy Payment | A one-off £100 for households in council tax bands A to D in England | Paid from January 2027 | -| Zero VAT on electricity | The 0% rate on household electricity, in force in Great Britain since 1 October 2026, is extended by three months | To 1 July 2027 | -| Fuel duty | The 5p cut is extended, and the April 2027 RPI rise moves to 1 July 2027 | To 1 July 2027 | -| Pension Tax Allowance | An income tax reduction for people above State Pension age, or reaching it during the tax year, whose total income is at most the full new State Pension, tapered above it | 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030 | -| Property income tax | Rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland | From 6 April 2027 | -| Trading allowance | Rises from £1,000 to £3,000 | From 6 April 2027 | -| Carer's Allowance taper | Above the weekly earnings limit, the allowance is withdrawn £1 for each £1 earned instead of all at once, in England and Wales | During 2030-31 | +| Measure | What changes | When | +| ------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------- | +| Household Energy Payment | A one-off £100 for households in council tax bands A to D in England | Paid from January 2027 | +| Zero VAT on electricity | The 0% rate on household electricity, in force in Great Britain since 1 October 2026, is extended by three months | To 1 July 2027 | +| Fuel duty | The 5p cut is extended, and the April 2027 RPI rise moves to 1 July 2027 | To 1 July 2027 | +| Pension Tax Allowance | An income tax reduction for people above State Pension age, or reaching it during the tax year, whose total income is at most the full new State Pension, tapered above it | 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030 | +| Property income tax | Rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland | From 6 April 2027 | +| Trading allowance | Rises from £1,000 to £3,000 | From 6 April 2027 | +| Carer's Allowance taper | Above the weekly earnings limit, the allowance is withdrawn £1 for each £1 earned instead of all at once, in England and Wales | During 2030-31 | Sources: [Budget 2026](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/budget-2026-document/budget-2026-html) and the [policy costings](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026). @@ -37,19 +37,19 @@ The Budget makes other changes that reach households, which our dashboard does n **Table 2: Other household measures we don't model, official costings (£ million)** -| Measure (Table 6.1 row) | What changes | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | -| ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | -| Student loans (83) | Interest on Plan 2 and Plan 3 loans capped at 6% from 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2027 | −230 | −170 | −10 | −10 | −5 | −15 | -| Universal Credit (8) | The £2,500 surplus earnings threshold kept for a year from 1 April 2027 | 0 | −140 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -| Mileage rates (5) | 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles from April 2026; 35p above that from April 2027 | −30 | −200 | −220 | −225 | −235 | −245 | -| Bus fares (4) | Single fares capped at £2 in England outside London for 2027, funded by reprioritising DESNZ budgets, which the costing includes | −50 | −180 | +65 | +170 | 0 | 0 | -| Cash ISAs (11) | The cash ISA limit stays at £20,000 | 0 | −5 | −20 | −35 | −50 | −70 | -| Lifetime ISA (39) | Withdrawal charge cut from 25% to 20% for first-time buyers of homes above the £450,000 price cap | −15 | −20 | −20 | −25 | −25 | −25 | -| Founders' Relief (26) | A new Capital Gains Tax relief for qualifying founders, from April 2027 | 0 | −260 | −180 | −260 | −285 | −300 | -| Business Asset Disposal Relief (60) | Lifetime limit cut from £1 million to £500,000 from April 2027 | +5 | +60 | +180 | +255 | +280 | +305 | -| Distributions (49) | Fewer ways for shareholders to take profits out of a company as capital gains where dividend tax fits better, from April 2028 | 0 | 0 | +55 | +800 | +775 | +785 | -| Private hire VAT (59) | Larger operators pay VAT on the full fare from 2 January 2028 | 0 | +95 | +385 | +395 | +410 | +425 | -| Company car tax (86) | Benefit-in-kind rates for 2030-31 set 1 point above 2029-30, up to 40% | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +310 | +345 | +| Measure (Table 6.1 row) | What changes | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | +| ----------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | +| Student loans (83) | Interest on Plan 2 and Plan 3 loans capped at 6% from 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2027 | −230 | −170 | −10 | −10 | −5 | −15 | +| Universal Credit (8) | The £2,500 surplus earnings threshold kept for a year from 1 April 2027 | 0 | −140 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| Mileage rates (5) | 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles from April 2026; 35p above that from April 2027 | −30 | −200 | −220 | −225 | −235 | −245 | +| Bus fares (4) | Single fares capped at £2 in England outside London for 2027, funded by reprioritising DESNZ budgets, which the costing includes | −50 | −180 | +65 | +170 | 0 | 0 | +| Cash ISAs (11) | The cash ISA limit stays at £20,000 | 0 | −5 | −20 | −35 | −50 | −70 | +| Lifetime ISA (39) | Withdrawal charge cut from 25% to 20% for first-time buyers of homes above the £450,000 price cap | −15 | −20 | −20 | −25 | −25 | −25 | +| Founders' Relief (26) | A new Capital Gains Tax relief for qualifying founders, from April 2027 | 0 | −260 | −180 | −260 | −285 | −300 | +| Business Asset Disposal Relief (60) | Lifetime limit cut from £1 million to £500,000 from April 2027 | +5 | +60 | +180 | +255 | +280 | +305 | +| Distributions (49) | Fewer ways for shareholders to take profits out of a company as capital gains where dividend tax fits better, from April 2028 | 0 | 0 | +55 | +800 | +775 | +785 | +| Private hire VAT (59) | Larger operators pay VAT on the full fare from 2 January 2028 | 0 | +95 | +385 | +395 | +410 | +425 | +| Company car tax (86) | Benefit-in-kind rates for 2030-31 set 1 point above 2029-30, up to 40% | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +310 | +345 | Source: HM Treasury, [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026) of Budget 2026. A negative number is a cost to the public finances. @@ -63,12 +63,13 @@ The package costs £3.11 billion in 2026-27, almost all of it the energy payment **Table 3: Budgetary impact of the seven measures (£ million)** -| | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | -| ------------------------------------- | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | -| PolicyEngine, the package | −3,110 | −615 | +210 | +166 | +301 | +281 | -| Official, the same seven measures | −3,955 | −1,095 | +260 | +120 | +280 | +180 | +| | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | +| ---------------------------------- | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | +| PolicyEngine, the package | −3,110 | −615 | +210 | +166 | +301 | +281 | +| Official, the same seven measures | −3,935 | −1,122 | +235 | +85 | +248 | +150 | +| Table 6.1 total, the same measures | −3,955 | −1,095 | +260 | +120 | +280 | +180 | -Official: the sum of rows 1, 2, 3, 7, 15, 52 and 61 of the Budget's [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026). A negative number is a cost to the public finances. The package differs from the sum of the seven measures run one at a time by less than £1 million in every year. We explain the differences from the official costings [below](#how-our-estimates-compare-with-the-official-costings). +Official: the sum of the seven measures' official lines in Table 6, from the OBR's detailed forecast table 1.1. Table 6.1 total, for context: the sum of rows 1, 2, 3, 7, 15, 52 and 61 of the Budget's [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026). A negative number is a cost to the public finances. The package differs from the sum of the seven measures run one at a time by less than £1 million in every year. We explain the differences from the official costings [below](#how-our-estimates-compare-with-the-official-costings). ### Household net income by income decile @@ -107,17 +108,17 @@ In 2026-27 the package raises net income in every decile, and by more as a share | Income decile | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2029-30 | | ------------- | ------: | ------: | ------: | -| 1 (lowest) | +104 | +24 | +6 | -| 2 | +107 | +23 | +6 | -| 3 | +107 | +22 | +6 | -| 4 | +109 | +23 | +2 | -| 5 | +108 | +27 | +1 | -| 6 | +108 | +29 | +4 | -| 7 | +109 | +30 | −3 | -| 8 | +110 | +27 | −6 | -| 9 | +107 | +17 | −21 | -| 10 (highest) | +98 | −12 | −51 | -| All | +107 | +21 | −6 | +| 1 (lowest) | +104 | +24 | +6 | +| 2 | +107 | +23 | +6 | +| 3 | +107 | +22 | +6 | +| 4 | +109 | +23 | +2 | +| 5 | +108 | +27 | +1 | +| 6 | +108 | +29 | +4 | +| 7 | +109 | +30 | −3 | +| 8 | +110 | +27 | −6 | +| 9 | +107 | +17 | −21 | +| 10 (highest) | +98 | −12 | −51 | +| All | +107 | +21 | −6 | Households are ranked into deciles by their income under the Households Below Average Income definition, adjusted for household size and before housing costs, with each decile holding about a tenth of people. The chart and Table 4 cover only the seven measures in Table 1, and none of the Budget's other measures. @@ -127,11 +128,11 @@ The Treasury's [analysis](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting- **Table 5: Share of people by the change in their household's net income** -| | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | -| ----------------------- | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | -| Gain | 98.6% | 90.0% | 3.4% | 3.9% | 1.2% | 1.2% | -| Lose | 0.0% | 4.7% | 5.6% | 5.6% | 5.8% | 5.7% | -| No change | 1.4% | 5.3% | 91.1% | 90.5% | 93.0% | 93.0% | +| | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | +| --------- | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | +| Gain | 98.6% | 90.0% | 3.4% | 3.9% | 1.2% | 1.2% | +| Lose | 0.0% | 4.7% | 5.6% | 5.6% | 5.8% | 5.7% | +| No change | 1.4% | 5.3% | 91.1% | 90.5% | 93.0% | 93.0% | A household gains or loses when its net income changes by more than 0.01%. @@ -159,38 +160,47 @@ The Gini index of income inequality falls by 0.17% in 2026-27 and by 0.05% in 20 ## How our estimates compare with the official costings +We compare each measure with the government's costing, certified by the OBR, using the line in the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/) that matches what we model. Fuel duty is the exception: its official figure is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify. The Budget's Table 6.1 rounds each measure's total to the nearest £5 million and includes the measure's other lines, so we give it for context only. + Our estimates differ from the official costings for four main reasons: when tax is counted (we score each tax year's liability; the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year), coverage (we use household survey data, so effects outside households, and on incomes the survey records thinly, are estimated less fully in ours), behaviour (ours are static; most official costings include responses) and scope (the parts of a policy each models). **Table 6: PolicyEngine and official costings by measure (£ million)** -| Measure | | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | -| ------------------------- | ------------ | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | -| Household Energy Payment | PolicyEngine | −1,969 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -| | Official | −2,625 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -| Zero VAT on electricity | PolicyEngine | −840 | −353 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -| | Official | −755 | −305 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -| Fuel duty | PolicyEngine | −301 | −521 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -| | Official | −575 | −780 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -| Pension Tax Allowance | PolicyEngine | 0 | −30 | −83 | −144 | 0 | 0 | -| | Official | 0 | −45 | −90 | −150 | +50 | −15 | -| Property income tax | PolicyEngine | 0 | +399 | +412 | +429 | +446 | +459 | -| | Official | 0 | +35 | +575 | +435 | +445 | +455 | -| Trading allowance | PolicyEngine | 0 | −110 | −118 | −119 | −120 | −130 | -| | Official | 0 | 0 | −225 | −165 | −175 | −180 | -| Carer's Allowance taper | PolicyEngine | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | −24 | −48 | -| | Official | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | −40 | −80 | - -Official: HM Treasury, [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026), rows 1, 2, 3, 52, 61, 15 and 7. - -Why each differs, from the [dashboard's notes](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026?tab=dashboard&sub=finances) on its comparison with the official costings. The notes also draw on further runs of our model and on the Budget documents, so some of their figures aren't in Table 3: - -- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours is 25% below the official £2,625 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the £100 payments in England, and ours is 94% of that; the Budget doesn't itemise the remaining £130 million or so. -- **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours is £85 million (11%) higher in 2026-27 and £48 million (16%) higher in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's domestic electricity volumes at average prices paid, grown with CPI, and the official costing from ONS consumer spending, which is 10% to 12% lower. At that level our cost would be within about 4% of the official figure in both years. -- **Fuel duty (coverage).** Ours is £274 million lower in 2026-27 and £259 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, about £13 billion of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy. Scaled up to the OBR's fuel duty receipts, our fuel duty cost would be about £450 million in 2026-27 and £760 million in 2027-28. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes £50 million and £87 million of VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. The rest of the 2026-27 gap fits the official costing if it assumes the full 5p returns on 1 January 2027 (about £555 million on 45 billion litres), where the law brings it back as 3p then and 2p more from 1 March (about £410 million). -- **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Our income tax cost is £42 million, £112 million and £193 million in 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30: in line with the official costing in 2027-28, and 25% and 29% higher in the next two years. We estimate that about 670,000 people gain in 2027-28, against the Treasury's 500,000. After Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction take back part of it, our net cost is £15 million (34%) below the official costing in 2027-28, £7 million (8%) below in 2028-29 and £6 million (4%) below in 2029-30. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance at £182 and £250 a year, from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The official costing also has figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32. The Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for these figures after the allowance ends; ours are zero. -- **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year than the one it's owed for: the OBR adds £0.0 billion (rounded) of Self Assessment receipts from the savings and property rate rises in 2027-28 and £1.0 billion in 2028-29, so the official figures for those two years aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours is within 1.5% of the official costing every year. The official costing takes off about £0.1 billion a year for landlords incorporating and lower compliance, which ours leaves out, so against the official costing before that behaviour, ours is about £0.1 billion a year lower. -- **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours is £46 million to £107 million a year below the official costing (28% to 47%), with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain, because we leave them unrelieved under the current £1,000 allowance. In 2027-28 the official costing has no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard gives the reason in its description of the comparison: the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year, so a change such as the trading allowance can appear about a year later in them than in ours. -- **Carer's Allowance taper.** Ours is about 60% of the official costing in both years: £24 million against £40 million in 2030-31, and £48 million against £80 million in 2031-32. Ours is net of the income tax on the higher allowance (£15 million and £32 million); before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million. We are still working through the reasons for the gap. +| Measure | | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | +| ------------------------ | ----------------------------- | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | +| Household Energy Payment | PolicyEngine | −1,969 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| | Official: PSCE in RDEL | −2,627 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| | Table 6.1 total | −2,625 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| Zero VAT on electricity | PolicyEngine | −840 | −353 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| | Official: VAT | −734 | −296 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| | Table 6.1 total | −755 | −305 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| Fuel duty | PolicyEngine | −301 | −521 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| | Official: Fuel Duty | −574 | −782 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| | Table 6.1 total | −575 | −780 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| Pension Tax Allowance | PolicyEngine | 0 | −30 | −83 | −144 | 0 | 0 | +| | Official: Income tax | 0 | −44 | −83 | −144 | +49 | −15 | +| | Table 6.1 total | 0 | −45 | −90 | −150 | +50 | −15 | +| Property income tax | PolicyEngine | 0 | +399 | +412 | +429 | +446 | +459 | +| | Official: Income tax | 0 | 0 | +539 | +394 | +403 | +412 | +| | Table 6.1 total | 0 | +35 | +575 | +435 | +445 | +455 | +| Trading allowance | PolicyEngine | 0 | −110 | −118 | −119 | −120 | −130 | +| | Official: Income tax and NICs | 0 | 0 | −221 | −165 | −171 | −178 | +| | Table 6.1 total | 0 | 0 | −225 | −165 | −175 | −180 | +| Carer's Allowance taper | PolicyEngine | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | −24 | −48 | +| | Official: Welfare inside cap | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | −33 | −69 | +| | Table 6.1 total | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | −40 | −80 | + +Official: the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/), measures 1, 2, 3, 52, 61, 15 and 7, the line or lines that match what we model, named as the table names them. Table 6.1 total: HM Treasury, [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026), rows 1, 2, 3, 52, 61, 15 and 7. Its totals also include the OBR table's other lines for each measure that aren't zero: Other AME (current) for zero VAT; PSCE in RDEL, Scottish BGA (current) and Scottish self-financed expenditure for the Pension Tax Allowance and the trading allowance; Onshore CT, Scottish BGA (current) and Scottish self-financed expenditure for property income tax; and Scottish BGA (current) for the Carer's Allowance taper. + +Why each differs. The reasons come from the [dashboard's notes](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026?tab=dashboard&sub=finances) on its comparison with the official costings, from the OBR's October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook and from the Budget documents. The notes compare our figures with Table 6.1's totals and also draw on further runs of our model, so some of their figures aren't in Table 6 or in our published results: + +- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours is 25% below the official £2,627 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the £100 payments in England, and ours is 94% of that; the Budget doesn't itemise the remaining £130 million or so. +- **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours is £106 million (14%) above the OBR's VAT line in 2026-27 and £58 million (19%) above it in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's domestic electricity volumes at average prices paid, grown with CPI, and the official costing from ONS consumer spending, which is 10% to 12% lower. +- **Fuel duty (coverage).** The official figure is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify. Ours is £272 million lower in 2026-27 and £261 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, about £13 billion of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy. Scaled up to the OBR's fuel duty receipts, our fuel duty cost would be about £450 million in 2026-27 and £760 million in 2027-28. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes £50 million and £87 million of VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. The rest of the 2026-27 gap fits the official costing if it assumes the full 5p returns on 1 January 2027 (about £555 million on 45 billion litres), where the law brings it back as 3p then and 2p more from 1 March (about £410 million). +- **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Our income tax cost is £42 million, £112 million and £193 million in 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30. The OBR's is £44 million, £83 million and £144 million (detailed forecast table 1.1), so ours is 6% lower in 2027-28 and 35% and 34% higher in the next two years. We estimate that about 670,000 people gain in 2027-28, against the Treasury's 500,000. Table 6 shows our net cost, after Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction take back part of the income tax cut; the measure's Welfare inside cap line in the OBR's table is zero. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance at £182 and £250 a year, from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The official costing also has figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32. The Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for these figures after the allowance ends; ours are zero. +- **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year than the one it's owed for: the OBR adds £0.0 billion (rounded) of Self Assessment receipts from the savings and property rate rises in 2027-28 and £1.0 billion in 2028-29 (Economic and fiscal outlook, Table 4.4), so the official figures for those two years aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours is 9% to 11% above the OBR's income tax line. The official costing includes small behavioural responses, more tax-motivated incorporation and higher non-compliance, that reduce the yield by £0.1 billion a year (Economic and fiscal outlook, paragraph 3.17); ours leaves them out. +- **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours is £47 million to £103 million a year below the OBR's income tax and NICs lines (27% to 47%), with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain, because we leave them unrelieved under the current £1,000 allowance. In 2027-28 the OBR's lines have no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard gives the reason in its description of the comparison: the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year, so a change such as the trading allowance can appear about a year later in them than in ours. +- **Carer's Allowance taper.** The official figure, the OBR's £38 million and £79 million before the Treasury rounds them, includes £5 million and £10 million of extra block grant for Scotland, where Carer's Allowance is devolved, and has no line for income tax. Its Carer's Allowance and Universal Credit spending is £33 million and £69 million (OBR, Economic and fiscal outlook, October 2026, detailed forecast table 1.1, measure 7). Ours, £24 million and £48 million, is net of the income tax on the higher allowance (£15 million and £32 million); before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million, about a sixth more than the OBR's spending. ## Savings income @@ -198,9 +208,12 @@ From 6 April 2027 the income tax rates on savings income rise 2 points, on top o **Table 7: Official costing of the savings income rate rise (£ million)** -| | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | -| ---------------------------- | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | -| Official (Table 6.1, row 62) | +15 | +125 | +555 | +520 | +555 | +590 | +| | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | +| ------------------------ | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | +| Official: Income tax | 0 | +63 | +483 | +443 | +475 | +510 | +| Table 6.1 total (row 62) | +15 | +125 | +555 | +520 | +555 | +590 | + +Official: the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/), measure 62, the line that matches what we model. Table 6.1's total also includes the OBR table's Onshore CT line for the measure. The official costing includes some savers moving their savings into ISAs and other tax-advantaged products. Our estimate is held back from this release while we update the savings income in our data, and follows with that update. @@ -214,6 +227,6 @@ Our estimates come from PolicyEngine's [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://ww - **The package.** The combined results are one simulation of the seven measures together, each modelled exactly as in its own run. - **Small samples.** The dashboard withholds any result that rests on fewer than three survey households. For the package in 2030-31 and 2031-32, it withholds the results for two income deciles and the average change across all households, the same cells it withholds for the Carer's Allowance taper on its own. -Every PolicyEngine figure in this briefing comes from the dashboard's published results (manifest revision 17), each read from files that match the checksums in their receipt, except the further figures quoted from the dashboard's notes on the comparison with the official costings. Every official figure comes from the Budget documents linked above. +Every PolicyEngine figure in this briefing comes from the dashboard's published results (manifest revision 17), each read from files that match the checksums in their receipt; the exceptions are the further figures quoted from the dashboard's notes on the comparison with the official costings, which come from further runs of our model. Every official figure comes from the OBR's October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook or the Budget documents linked above. _PolicyEngine's UK Budget analysis is funded by the [Nuffield Foundation](https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/). The views expressed are ours and not necessarily the Foundation's._ From 04aad56216ebf2172733c10dbc8002c4412bbd7c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:04:20 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 11/21] Briefing: Table 2 on the OBR's measure totals; PTA about 5% lower MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Table 2 (measures we don't model) now gives each measure's total from the OBR's detailed forecast table 1.1, to the £ million, with Table 6.1's rounded totals as context in the source line. The Pension Tax Allowance comparison says about 5% lower in 2027-28, from the printed figures. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- .../uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 30 +++++++++---------- 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 15 deletions(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index 1d8d20dff..cdc362f7d 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -37,21 +37,21 @@ The Budget makes other changes that reach households, which our dashboard does n **Table 2: Other household measures we don't model, official costings (£ million)** -| Measure (Table 6.1 row) | What changes | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | +| Measure (number) | What changes | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | | ----------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | -| Student loans (83) | Interest on Plan 2 and Plan 3 loans capped at 6% from 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2027 | −230 | −170 | −10 | −10 | −5 | −15 | -| Universal Credit (8) | The £2,500 surplus earnings threshold kept for a year from 1 April 2027 | 0 | −140 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -| Mileage rates (5) | 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles from April 2026; 35p above that from April 2027 | −30 | −200 | −220 | −225 | −235 | −245 | -| Bus fares (4) | Single fares capped at £2 in England outside London for 2027, funded by reprioritising DESNZ budgets, which the costing includes | −50 | −180 | +65 | +170 | 0 | 0 | -| Cash ISAs (11) | The cash ISA limit stays at £20,000 | 0 | −5 | −20 | −35 | −50 | −70 | -| Lifetime ISA (39) | Withdrawal charge cut from 25% to 20% for first-time buyers of homes above the £450,000 price cap | −15 | −20 | −20 | −25 | −25 | −25 | -| Founders' Relief (26) | A new Capital Gains Tax relief for qualifying founders, from April 2027 | 0 | −260 | −180 | −260 | −285 | −300 | -| Business Asset Disposal Relief (60) | Lifetime limit cut from £1 million to £500,000 from April 2027 | +5 | +60 | +180 | +255 | +280 | +305 | -| Distributions (49) | Fewer ways for shareholders to take profits out of a company as capital gains where dividend tax fits better, from April 2028 | 0 | 0 | +55 | +800 | +775 | +785 | -| Private hire VAT (59) | Larger operators pay VAT on the full fare from 2 January 2028 | 0 | +95 | +385 | +395 | +410 | +425 | -| Company car tax (86) | Benefit-in-kind rates for 2030-31 set 1 point above 2029-30, up to 40% | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +310 | +345 | - -Source: HM Treasury, [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026) of Budget 2026. A negative number is a cost to the public finances. +| Student loans (83) | Interest on Plan 2 and Plan 3 loans capped at 6% from 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2027 | −230 | −172 | −12 | −10 | −3 | −15 | +| Universal Credit (8) | The £2,500 surplus earnings threshold kept for a year from 1 April 2027 | 0 | −142 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| Mileage rates (5) | 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles from April 2026; 35p above that from April 2027 | −28 | −199 | −222 | −224 | −237 | −245 | +| Bus fares (4) | Single fares capped at £2 in England outside London for 2027, funded by reprioritising DESNZ budgets, which the costing includes | −50 | −181 | +63 | +170 | 0 | 0 | +| Cash ISAs (11) | The cash ISA limit stays at £20,000 | 0 | −4 | −20 | −35 | −52 | −72 | +| Lifetime ISA (39) | Withdrawal charge cut from 25% to 20% for first-time buyers of homes above the £450,000 price cap | −17 | −20 | −21 | −23 | −25 | −26 | +| Founders' Relief (26) | A new Capital Gains Tax relief for qualifying founders, from April 2027 | 0 | −258 | −180 | −261 | −283 | −302 | +| Business Asset Disposal Relief (60) | Lifetime limit cut from £1 million to £500,000 from April 2027 | +3 | +60 | +178 | +253 | +279 | +303 | +| Distributions (49) | Fewer ways for shareholders to take profits out of a company as capital gains where dividend tax fits better, from April 2028 | 0 | 0 | +55 | +802 | +775 | +785 | +| Private hire VAT (59) | Larger operators pay VAT on the full fare from 2 January 2028 | 0 | +93 | +383 | +394 | +409 | +423 | +| Company car tax (86) | Benefit-in-kind rates for 2030-31 set 1 point above 2029-30, up to 40% | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +312 | +343 | + +Source: the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/), each measure's total; the number in brackets is its measure number there, the same as its row in the Budget's [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026). Table 6.1 gives the same totals rounded to the nearest £5 million. A negative number is a cost to the public finances. ## The combined effect @@ -197,7 +197,7 @@ Why each differs. The reasons come from the [dashboard's notes](https://www.poli - **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours is 25% below the official £2,627 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the £100 payments in England, and ours is 94% of that; the Budget doesn't itemise the remaining £130 million or so. - **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours is £106 million (14%) above the OBR's VAT line in 2026-27 and £58 million (19%) above it in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's domestic electricity volumes at average prices paid, grown with CPI, and the official costing from ONS consumer spending, which is 10% to 12% lower. - **Fuel duty (coverage).** The official figure is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify. Ours is £272 million lower in 2026-27 and £261 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, about £13 billion of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy. Scaled up to the OBR's fuel duty receipts, our fuel duty cost would be about £450 million in 2026-27 and £760 million in 2027-28. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes £50 million and £87 million of VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. The rest of the 2026-27 gap fits the official costing if it assumes the full 5p returns on 1 January 2027 (about £555 million on 45 billion litres), where the law brings it back as 3p then and 2p more from 1 March (about £410 million). -- **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Our income tax cost is £42 million, £112 million and £193 million in 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30. The OBR's is £44 million, £83 million and £144 million (detailed forecast table 1.1), so ours is 6% lower in 2027-28 and 35% and 34% higher in the next two years. We estimate that about 670,000 people gain in 2027-28, against the Treasury's 500,000. Table 6 shows our net cost, after Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction take back part of the income tax cut; the measure's Welfare inside cap line in the OBR's table is zero. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance at £182 and £250 a year, from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The official costing also has figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32. The Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for these figures after the allowance ends; ours are zero. +- **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Our income tax cost is £42 million, £112 million and £193 million in 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30. The OBR's is £44 million, £83 million and £144 million (detailed forecast table 1.1), so ours is about 5% lower in 2027-28 and 35% and 34% higher in the next two years. We estimate that about 670,000 people gain in 2027-28, against the Treasury's 500,000. Table 6 shows our net cost, after Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction take back part of the income tax cut; the measure's Welfare inside cap line in the OBR's table is zero. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance at £182 and £250 a year, from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The official costing also has figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32. The Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for these figures after the allowance ends; ours are zero. - **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year than the one it's owed for: the OBR adds £0.0 billion (rounded) of Self Assessment receipts from the savings and property rate rises in 2027-28 and £1.0 billion in 2028-29 (Economic and fiscal outlook, Table 4.4), so the official figures for those two years aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours is 9% to 11% above the OBR's income tax line. The official costing includes small behavioural responses, more tax-motivated incorporation and higher non-compliance, that reduce the yield by £0.1 billion a year (Economic and fiscal outlook, paragraph 3.17); ours leaves them out. - **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours is £47 million to £103 million a year below the OBR's income tax and NICs lines (27% to 47%), with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain, because we leave them unrelieved under the current £1,000 allowance. In 2027-28 the OBR's lines have no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard gives the reason in its description of the comparison: the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year, so a change such as the trading allowance can appear about a year later in them than in ours. - **Carer's Allowance taper.** The official figure, the OBR's £38 million and £79 million before the Treasury rounds them, includes £5 million and £10 million of extra block grant for Scotland, where Carer's Allowance is devolved, and has no line for income tax. Its Carer's Allowance and Universal Credit spending is £33 million and £69 million (OBR, Economic and fiscal outlook, October 2026, detailed forecast table 1.1, measure 7). Ours, £24 million and £48 million, is net of the income tax on the higher allowance (£15 million and £32 million); before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million, about a sixth more than the OBR's spending. From 02ae6535de0ff390f3984b79b64a4665ea991647 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:18:38 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 12/21] Briefing: exceeds for is above; property timing as the dashboard words it Max's style rule: the VAT and property comparisons now say ours exceeds the OBR's line by the gap, rather than is the gap above it. The property bullet says the OBR adds almost no Self Assessment receipts in 2027-28, as the dashboard's note now does, still cited to EFO Table 4.4 (0.0 in 2027-28). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index cdc362f7d..6cb4d7855 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -195,10 +195,10 @@ Official: the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-an Why each differs. The reasons come from the [dashboard's notes](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026?tab=dashboard&sub=finances) on its comparison with the official costings, from the OBR's October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook and from the Budget documents. The notes compare our figures with Table 6.1's totals and also draw on further runs of our model, so some of their figures aren't in Table 6 or in our published results: - **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours is 25% below the official £2,627 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the £100 payments in England, and ours is 94% of that; the Budget doesn't itemise the remaining £130 million or so. -- **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours is £106 million (14%) above the OBR's VAT line in 2026-27 and £58 million (19%) above it in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's domestic electricity volumes at average prices paid, grown with CPI, and the official costing from ONS consumer spending, which is 10% to 12% lower. +- **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours exceeds the OBR's VAT line by £106 million (14%) in 2026-27 and by £58 million (19%) in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's domestic electricity volumes at average prices paid, grown with CPI, and the official costing from ONS consumer spending, which is 10% to 12% lower. - **Fuel duty (coverage).** The official figure is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify. Ours is £272 million lower in 2026-27 and £261 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, about £13 billion of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy. Scaled up to the OBR's fuel duty receipts, our fuel duty cost would be about £450 million in 2026-27 and £760 million in 2027-28. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes £50 million and £87 million of VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. The rest of the 2026-27 gap fits the official costing if it assumes the full 5p returns on 1 January 2027 (about £555 million on 45 billion litres), where the law brings it back as 3p then and 2p more from 1 March (about £410 million). - **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Our income tax cost is £42 million, £112 million and £193 million in 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30. The OBR's is £44 million, £83 million and £144 million (detailed forecast table 1.1), so ours is about 5% lower in 2027-28 and 35% and 34% higher in the next two years. We estimate that about 670,000 people gain in 2027-28, against the Treasury's 500,000. Table 6 shows our net cost, after Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction take back part of the income tax cut; the measure's Welfare inside cap line in the OBR's table is zero. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance at £182 and £250 a year, from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The official costing also has figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32. The Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for these figures after the allowance ends; ours are zero. -- **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year than the one it's owed for: the OBR adds £0.0 billion (rounded) of Self Assessment receipts from the savings and property rate rises in 2027-28 and £1.0 billion in 2028-29 (Economic and fiscal outlook, Table 4.4), so the official figures for those two years aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours is 9% to 11% above the OBR's income tax line. The official costing includes small behavioural responses, more tax-motivated incorporation and higher non-compliance, that reduce the yield by £0.1 billion a year (Economic and fiscal outlook, paragraph 3.17); ours leaves them out. +- **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year than the one it's owed for: the OBR adds almost no Self Assessment receipts from the savings and property rate rises in 2027-28 and £1.0 billion in 2028-29 (Economic and fiscal outlook, Table 4.4), so the official figures for those two years aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours exceeds the OBR's income tax line by 9% to 11%. The official costing includes small behavioural responses, more tax-motivated incorporation and higher non-compliance, that reduce the yield by £0.1 billion a year (Economic and fiscal outlook, paragraph 3.17); ours leaves them out. - **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours is £47 million to £103 million a year below the OBR's income tax and NICs lines (27% to 47%), with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain, because we leave them unrelieved under the current £1,000 allowance. In 2027-28 the OBR's lines have no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard gives the reason in its description of the comparison: the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year, so a change such as the trading allowance can appear about a year later in them than in ours. - **Carer's Allowance taper.** The official figure, the OBR's £38 million and £79 million before the Treasury rounds them, includes £5 million and £10 million of extra block grant for Scotland, where Carer's Allowance is devolved, and has no line for income tax. Its Carer's Allowance and Universal Credit spending is £33 million and £69 million (OBR, Economic and fiscal outlook, October 2026, detailed forecast table 1.1, measure 7). Ours, £24 million and £48 million, is net of the income tax on the higher allowance (£15 million and £32 million); before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million, about a sixth more than the OBR's spending. From 04f2afd02116b3dac5344b6b94500a361955a06a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:21:59 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 13/21] Briefing: link the property income tax explainer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The property paragraph now links Ziming's explainer (merged on main), as the other measures link theirs; its figures match ours (£399m in 2027-28, the OBR's £394m income tax line in 2029-30). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index 6cb4d7855..1c146a447 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -152,7 +152,7 @@ The Gini index of income inequality falls by 0.17% in 2026-27 and by 0.05% in 20 **Pension Tax Allowance.** From 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030, people above State Pension age, or reaching it during the tax year, whose total income is no more than the full new State Pension pay no income tax; in 2027-28 the allowance is worth up to £94, and above that income it falls by £1 for every £3. We estimate a net cost of £30 million in 2027-28, £83 million in 2028-29 and £144 million in 2029-30, after lower spending on Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction. About 3% of people live in households that gain in 2029-30. See [our Pension Tax Allowance analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/pension-tax-allowance). -**Property income tax.** From 6 April 2027 the rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We estimate it raises £399 million in 2027-28, rising to £459 million in 2031-32. In 2029-30, about 6% of people live in households that lose, and the highest-income decile loses £62 a year on average. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). +**Property income tax.** From 6 April 2027 the rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We estimate it raises £399 million in 2027-28, rising to £459 million in 2031-32. In 2029-30, about 6% of people live in households that lose, and the highest-income decile loses £62 a year on average. See [our property income tax analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/uk-autumn-budget-2026-property-income-tax) and the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). **Trading allowance.** From 6 April 2027 the first £3,000 of trading and miscellaneous income each year is tax-free, up from £1,000. We estimate it costs £110 million in 2027-28, rising to £130 million in 2031-32. About 1% of people live in households that gain. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). From 4be07299017602c3d1ee6c96c58dd54ca013b053 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:36:31 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 14/21] Briefing: active voice (Max's voice sweep) Seven wording-only changes from the voice-sweep session: we leave out, we rank, timing, we estimate less fully, falls below (energy payment and trading allowance gaps), we hold back. No figure, link or claim changes. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- .../posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 12 ++++++------ 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index 1c146a447..d36b243ad 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ Source: the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and- ## The combined effect -We run the seven measures together as one package, in a single simulation for each year. The savings income rate rise is left out until our estimate is ready. +We run the seven measures together as one package, in a single simulation for each year. We leave out the savings income rate rise until our estimate is ready. ### Cost to the public finances @@ -120,7 +120,7 @@ In 2026-27 the package raises net income in every decile, and by more as a share | 10 (highest) | +98 | −12 | −51 | | All | +107 | +21 | −6 | -Households are ranked into deciles by their income under the Households Below Average Income definition, adjusted for household size and before housing costs, with each decile holding about a tenth of people. The chart and Table 4 cover only the seven measures in Table 1, and none of the Budget's other measures. +We rank households into deciles by their income under the Households Below Average Income definition, adjusted for household size and before housing costs, with each decile holding about a tenth of people. The chart and Table 4 cover only the seven measures in Table 1, and none of the Budget's other measures. The Treasury's [analysis](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026) of the Budget's effect on households in 2027-28 (its Figures 1.A and 1.B) covers 18 of the Budget's measures (paragraph 1.4). Five of them are among ours. It includes the savings income rate rise, which we leave out, and leaves out the Household Energy Payment and the Carer's Allowance change. So its decile figures cover a different set of policies from ours. It finds that in 2027-28 the lowest-income households gain most as a share of income, that tax rises are concentrated on the highest-income households, and that on average all but the top 20% of households gain. @@ -162,7 +162,7 @@ The Gini index of income inequality falls by 0.17% in 2026-27 and by 0.05% in 20 We compare each measure with the government's costing, certified by the OBR, using the line in the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/) that matches what we model. Fuel duty is the exception: its official figure is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify. The Budget's Table 6.1 rounds each measure's total to the nearest £5 million and includes the measure's other lines, so we give it for context only. -Our estimates differ from the official costings for four main reasons: when tax is counted (we score each tax year's liability; the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year), coverage (we use household survey data, so effects outside households, and on incomes the survey records thinly, are estimated less fully in ours), behaviour (ours are static; most official costings include responses) and scope (the parts of a policy each models). +Our estimates differ from the official costings for four main reasons: timing (we score each tax year's liability; the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year), coverage (we use household survey data, so we estimate less fully the effects outside households and on incomes the survey records thinly), behaviour (ours are static; most official costings include responses) and scope (the parts of a policy each models). **Table 6: PolicyEngine and official costings by measure (£ million)** @@ -194,12 +194,12 @@ Official: the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-an Why each differs. The reasons come from the [dashboard's notes](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026?tab=dashboard&sub=finances) on its comparison with the official costings, from the OBR's October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook and from the Budget documents. The notes compare our figures with Table 6.1's totals and also draw on further runs of our model, so some of their figures aren't in Table 6 or in our published results: -- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours is 25% below the official £2,627 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the £100 payments in England, and ours is 94% of that; the Budget doesn't itemise the remaining £130 million or so. +- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours falls 25% below the official £2,627 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the £100 payments in England, and ours is 94% of that; the Budget doesn't itemise the remaining £130 million or so. - **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours exceeds the OBR's VAT line by £106 million (14%) in 2026-27 and by £58 million (19%) in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's domestic electricity volumes at average prices paid, grown with CPI, and the official costing from ONS consumer spending, which is 10% to 12% lower. - **Fuel duty (coverage).** The official figure is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify. Ours is £272 million lower in 2026-27 and £261 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, about £13 billion of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy. Scaled up to the OBR's fuel duty receipts, our fuel duty cost would be about £450 million in 2026-27 and £760 million in 2027-28. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes £50 million and £87 million of VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. The rest of the 2026-27 gap fits the official costing if it assumes the full 5p returns on 1 January 2027 (about £555 million on 45 billion litres), where the law brings it back as 3p then and 2p more from 1 March (about £410 million). - **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Our income tax cost is £42 million, £112 million and £193 million in 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30. The OBR's is £44 million, £83 million and £144 million (detailed forecast table 1.1), so ours is about 5% lower in 2027-28 and 35% and 34% higher in the next two years. We estimate that about 670,000 people gain in 2027-28, against the Treasury's 500,000. Table 6 shows our net cost, after Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction take back part of the income tax cut; the measure's Welfare inside cap line in the OBR's table is zero. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance at £182 and £250 a year, from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The official costing also has figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32. The Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for these figures after the allowance ends; ours are zero. - **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year than the one it's owed for: the OBR adds almost no Self Assessment receipts from the savings and property rate rises in 2027-28 and £1.0 billion in 2028-29 (Economic and fiscal outlook, Table 4.4), so the official figures for those two years aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours exceeds the OBR's income tax line by 9% to 11%. The official costing includes small behavioural responses, more tax-motivated incorporation and higher non-compliance, that reduce the yield by £0.1 billion a year (Economic and fiscal outlook, paragraph 3.17); ours leaves them out. -- **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours is £47 million to £103 million a year below the OBR's income tax and NICs lines (27% to 47%), with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain, because we leave them unrelieved under the current £1,000 allowance. In 2027-28 the OBR's lines have no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard gives the reason in its description of the comparison: the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year, so a change such as the trading allowance can appear about a year later in them than in ours. +- **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours falls £47 million to £103 million a year below the OBR's income tax and NICs lines (27% to 47%), with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain, because we leave them unrelieved under the current £1,000 allowance. In 2027-28 the OBR's lines have no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard gives the reason in its description of the comparison: the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year, so a change such as the trading allowance can appear about a year later in them than in ours. - **Carer's Allowance taper.** The official figure, the OBR's £38 million and £79 million before the Treasury rounds them, includes £5 million and £10 million of extra block grant for Scotland, where Carer's Allowance is devolved, and has no line for income tax. Its Carer's Allowance and Universal Credit spending is £33 million and £69 million (OBR, Economic and fiscal outlook, October 2026, detailed forecast table 1.1, measure 7). Ours, £24 million and £48 million, is net of the income tax on the higher allowance (£15 million and £32 million); before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million, about a sixth more than the OBR's spending. ## Savings income @@ -215,7 +215,7 @@ From 6 April 2027 the income tax rates on savings income rise 2 points, on top o Official: the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/), measure 62, the line that matches what we model. Table 6.1's total also includes the OBR table's Onshore CT line for the measure. -The official costing includes some savers moving their savings into ISAs and other tax-advantaged products. Our estimate is held back from this release while we update the savings income in our data, and follows with that update. +The official costing includes some savers moving their savings into ISAs and other tax-advantaged products. We hold our estimate back from this release while we update the savings income in our data; it follows with that update. ## Methodology From 8b913fc21d9fbbb82baa2f5672ee62cd2f880eb1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:50:55 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 15/21] Briefing: gaps from the printed figures; energy payment remainder MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The VAT, fuel duty and trading allowance gaps now follow from the figures Table 6 prints (£57m, £273m, £46m), as the PTA's do, so a reader can redo them and they match the dashboard's notes on the OBR lines (#303). The energy payment's remainder now rests on the Budget's own count: at £100 each, up to 20 million households take up to £2,000 million; neither the OBR nor the Budget itemises the rest. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- .../data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 8 ++++---- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index d36b243ad..21977e53f 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -194,12 +194,12 @@ Official: the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-an Why each differs. The reasons come from the [dashboard's notes](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026?tab=dashboard&sub=finances) on its comparison with the official costings, from the OBR's October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook and from the Budget documents. The notes compare our figures with Table 6.1's totals and also draw on further runs of our model, so some of their figures aren't in Table 6 or in our published results: -- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours falls 25% below the official £2,627 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the £100 payments in England, and ours is 94% of that; the Budget doesn't itemise the remaining £130 million or so. -- **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours exceeds the OBR's VAT line by £106 million (14%) in 2026-27 and by £58 million (19%) in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's domestic electricity volumes at average prices paid, grown with CPI, and the official costing from ONS consumer spending, which is 10% to 12% lower. -- **Fuel duty (coverage).** The official figure is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify. Ours is £272 million lower in 2026-27 and £261 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, about £13 billion of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy. Scaled up to the OBR's fuel duty receipts, our fuel duty cost would be about £450 million in 2026-27 and £760 million in 2027-28. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes £50 million and £87 million of VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. The rest of the 2026-27 gap fits the official costing if it assumes the full 5p returns on 1 January 2027 (about £555 million on 45 billion litres), where the law brings it back as 3p then and 2p more from 1 March (about £410 million). +- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours falls 25% below the official £2,627 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the payment in England, and ours is 94% of that. At £100 each, the up to 20 million households the Budget names take up to £2,000 million of it; neither the OBR nor the Budget itemises the rest. +- **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours exceeds the OBR's VAT line by £106 million (14%) in 2026-27 and by £57 million (19%) in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's domestic electricity volumes at average prices paid, grown with CPI, and the official costing from ONS consumer spending, which is 10% to 12% lower. +- **Fuel duty (coverage).** The official figure is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify. Ours is £273 million lower in 2026-27 and £261 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, about £13 billion of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy. Scaled up to the OBR's fuel duty receipts, our fuel duty cost would be about £450 million in 2026-27 and £760 million in 2027-28. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes £50 million and £87 million of VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. The rest of the 2026-27 gap fits the official costing if it assumes the full 5p returns on 1 January 2027 (about £555 million on 45 billion litres), where the law brings it back as 3p then and 2p more from 1 March (about £410 million). - **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Our income tax cost is £42 million, £112 million and £193 million in 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30. The OBR's is £44 million, £83 million and £144 million (detailed forecast table 1.1), so ours is about 5% lower in 2027-28 and 35% and 34% higher in the next two years. We estimate that about 670,000 people gain in 2027-28, against the Treasury's 500,000. Table 6 shows our net cost, after Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction take back part of the income tax cut; the measure's Welfare inside cap line in the OBR's table is zero. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance at £182 and £250 a year, from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The official costing also has figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32. The Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for these figures after the allowance ends; ours are zero. - **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year than the one it's owed for: the OBR adds almost no Self Assessment receipts from the savings and property rate rises in 2027-28 and £1.0 billion in 2028-29 (Economic and fiscal outlook, Table 4.4), so the official figures for those two years aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours exceeds the OBR's income tax line by 9% to 11%. The official costing includes small behavioural responses, more tax-motivated incorporation and higher non-compliance, that reduce the yield by £0.1 billion a year (Economic and fiscal outlook, paragraph 3.17); ours leaves them out. -- **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours falls £47 million to £103 million a year below the OBR's income tax and NICs lines (27% to 47%), with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain, because we leave them unrelieved under the current £1,000 allowance. In 2027-28 the OBR's lines have no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard gives the reason in its description of the comparison: the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year, so a change such as the trading allowance can appear about a year later in them than in ours. +- **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours falls £46 million to £103 million a year below the OBR's income tax and NICs lines (27% to 47%), with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain, because we leave them unrelieved under the current £1,000 allowance. In 2027-28 the OBR's lines have no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard gives the reason in its description of the comparison: the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year, so a change such as the trading allowance can appear about a year later in them than in ours. - **Carer's Allowance taper.** The official figure, the OBR's £38 million and £79 million before the Treasury rounds them, includes £5 million and £10 million of extra block grant for Scotland, where Carer's Allowance is devolved, and has no line for income tax. Its Carer's Allowance and Universal Credit spending is £33 million and £69 million (OBR, Economic and fiscal outlook, October 2026, detailed forecast table 1.1, measure 7). Ours, £24 million and £48 million, is net of the income tax on the higher allowance (£15 million and £32 million); before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million, about a sixth more than the OBR's spending. ## Savings income From b800ea4d5151bc5feae7773be13bcdf05dc1c632 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:57:27 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 16/21] Briefing: what we're improving Max's approved text (28 Oct, "Use the widened text", relayed by the coordinator), verbatim under its own heading before the methodology: the update later this week and the work beyond it. Poverty stays held. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- .../articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 16 ++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 16 insertions(+) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index 21977e53f..81783eefc 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -217,6 +217,22 @@ Official: the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-an The official costing includes some savers moving their savings into ISAs and other tax-advantaged products. We hold our estimate back from this release while we update the savings income in our data; it follows with that update. +## What we're improving + +We plan to update these results later this week. The update will: + +- add poverty and people-affected figures; +- add national figures for the savings income tax rise, once we have improved our savings income data (the calculator already includes it); +- apply the trading allowance to miscellaneous income as well as trading income, which will raise our estimate of its cost; +- correct how the Carer's Allowance taper interacts with overlapping benefits, such as the State Pension, in 2030-31; +- extend the fuel duty cut to road fuel gases (LPG and natural gas), as the government's costing does; +- give the Pension Tax Allowance to everyone who reaches State Pension age during the tax year. + +We are also working on: + +- projecting household electricity spending with retail energy prices rather than general inflation; +- adding the Budget's measures to PolicyEngine UK itself, so anyone using our open-source model can run them. + ## Methodology Our estimates come from PolicyEngine's [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026), which runs the `policyengine` Python package (version 6.11.1) with PolicyEngine UK (version 2.151.0) on Microcosm UK 2024-25, our survey-based dataset calibrated before the Budget. Prices and earnings follow the OBR's [October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/): every simulation, with and without the Budget's measures, uses its growth rates for CPI, RPI, average earnings and house prices. From 6a14eb17cfb6db9ca1f840f5ec1c486dc66aa0fc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 18:01:02 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 17/21] Briefing: link the trading allowance and Carer's Allowance explainers; the CA measure's total MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The trading allowance (#1463) and Carer's Allowance taper (#1464) paragraphs link their explainers, whose figures match ours. The Carer's Allowance comparison calls £38 million and £79 million the measure's total in the OBR's table, not the official figure (Sol r4 finding 6, agreed by the coordinator); the official comparison stays the Welfare inside cap line. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- .../data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 6 +++--- 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index 81783eefc..11e7ee60a 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -154,9 +154,9 @@ The Gini index of income inequality falls by 0.17% in 2026-27 and by 0.05% in 20 **Property income tax.** From 6 April 2027 the rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We estimate it raises £399 million in 2027-28, rising to £459 million in 2031-32. In 2029-30, about 6% of people live in households that lose, and the highest-income decile loses £62 a year on average. See [our property income tax analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/uk-autumn-budget-2026-property-income-tax) and the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). -**Trading allowance.** From 6 April 2027 the first £3,000 of trading and miscellaneous income each year is tax-free, up from £1,000. We estimate it costs £110 million in 2027-28, rising to £130 million in 2031-32. About 1% of people live in households that gain. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). +**Trading allowance.** From 6 April 2027 the first £3,000 of trading and miscellaneous income each year is tax-free, up from £1,000. We estimate it costs £110 million in 2027-28, rising to £130 million in 2031-32. About 1% of people live in households that gain. See [our trading allowance analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/uk-autumn-budget-2026-trading-allowance) and the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). -**Carer's Allowance taper.** Today a carer who earns more than the weekly earnings limit loses all of Carer's Allowance. During 2030-31, once a new IT system is in place, carers in England and Wales will instead keep the allowance less £1 for each £1 earned above the limit. We count half of 2030-31 and estimate a cost of £24 million that year and £48 million in 2031-32. The Budget puts the number of carers helped at around 48,000. See the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). +**Carer's Allowance taper.** Today a carer who earns more than the weekly earnings limit loses all of Carer's Allowance. During 2030-31, once a new IT system is in place, carers in England and Wales will instead keep the allowance less £1 for each £1 earned above the limit. We count half of 2030-31 and estimate a cost of £24 million that year and £48 million in 2031-32. The Budget puts the number of carers helped at around 48,000. See [our Carer's Allowance taper analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/carers-allowance-taper) and the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). ## How our estimates compare with the official costings @@ -200,7 +200,7 @@ Why each differs. The reasons come from the [dashboard's notes](https://www.poli - **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Our income tax cost is £42 million, £112 million and £193 million in 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30. The OBR's is £44 million, £83 million and £144 million (detailed forecast table 1.1), so ours is about 5% lower in 2027-28 and 35% and 34% higher in the next two years. We estimate that about 670,000 people gain in 2027-28, against the Treasury's 500,000. Table 6 shows our net cost, after Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction take back part of the income tax cut; the measure's Welfare inside cap line in the OBR's table is zero. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance at £182 and £250 a year, from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The official costing also has figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32. The Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for these figures after the allowance ends; ours are zero. - **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year than the one it's owed for: the OBR adds almost no Self Assessment receipts from the savings and property rate rises in 2027-28 and £1.0 billion in 2028-29 (Economic and fiscal outlook, Table 4.4), so the official figures for those two years aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours exceeds the OBR's income tax line by 9% to 11%. The official costing includes small behavioural responses, more tax-motivated incorporation and higher non-compliance, that reduce the yield by £0.1 billion a year (Economic and fiscal outlook, paragraph 3.17); ours leaves them out. - **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours falls £46 million to £103 million a year below the OBR's income tax and NICs lines (27% to 47%), with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain, because we leave them unrelieved under the current £1,000 allowance. In 2027-28 the OBR's lines have no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard gives the reason in its description of the comparison: the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year, so a change such as the trading allowance can appear about a year later in them than in ours. -- **Carer's Allowance taper.** The official figure, the OBR's £38 million and £79 million before the Treasury rounds them, includes £5 million and £10 million of extra block grant for Scotland, where Carer's Allowance is devolved, and has no line for income tax. Its Carer's Allowance and Universal Credit spending is £33 million and £69 million (OBR, Economic and fiscal outlook, October 2026, detailed forecast table 1.1, measure 7). Ours, £24 million and £48 million, is net of the income tax on the higher allowance (£15 million and £32 million); before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million, about a sixth more than the OBR's spending. +- **Carer's Allowance taper.** The measure's total in the OBR's table is £38 million in 2030-31 and £79 million in 2031-32, before the Treasury rounds it to the nearest £5 million. It includes £5 million and £10 million of extra block grant for Scotland, where Carer's Allowance is devolved, and has no line for income tax. Its Carer's Allowance and Universal Credit spending is £33 million and £69 million (OBR, Economic and fiscal outlook, October 2026, detailed forecast table 1.1, measure 7). Ours, £24 million and £48 million, is net of the income tax on the higher allowance (£15 million and £32 million); before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million, about a sixth more than the OBR's spending. ## Savings income From 819aa7fe83fe7dbaa557cbbc4ee1bc23f4e855d3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 18:12:38 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 18/21] Briefing: active voice, reduced passives included Max's rule (28 Oct): active voice in all writing, and reduced passives count. "Certified by the OBR" becomes "which the OBR certified"; "is extended" becomes "runs three months longer"; "capped at", "cut from", "kept for a year" and "set 1 point above" in Tables 1 and 2 become active or noun phrases; "rounded to", "calibrated before", "quoted from" and "linked above" name who acts. Every number, name and claim is unchanged. The Nuffield credit stays as the fixed formula the coordinator kept, and "What we're improving" stays as Max approved it. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- .../uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 66 +++++++++---------- 1 file changed, 33 insertions(+), 33 deletions(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index 11e7ee60a..99d1f04d2 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ Key results, from PolicyEngine's static microsimulation: - About 99% of people live in households that gain in 2026-27. In 2029-30, after the energy measures end, about 4% of people live in households that gain and about 6% in households that lose. - The highest-income decile loses £50 a year on average in 2028-29, rising to £56 in 2031-32, as property income tax rates rise. -These figures cover only the seven measures we model, listed in Table 1, and none of the Budget's other measures. +These figures cover only the seven measures we model, which Table 1 lists, and none of the Budget's other measures. _[Use PolicyEngine's Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026) to explore the results by measure, year and household, or to calculate the effect on your own household._ @@ -15,43 +15,43 @@ _[Use PolicyEngine's Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/ **Table 1: The seven measures we model** -| Measure | What changes | When | -| ------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------- | -| Household Energy Payment | A one-off £100 for households in council tax bands A to D in England | Paid from January 2027 | -| Zero VAT on electricity | The 0% rate on household electricity, in force in Great Britain since 1 October 2026, is extended by three months | To 1 July 2027 | -| Fuel duty | The 5p cut is extended, and the April 2027 RPI rise moves to 1 July 2027 | To 1 July 2027 | -| Pension Tax Allowance | An income tax reduction for people above State Pension age, or reaching it during the tax year, whose total income is at most the full new State Pension, tapered above it | 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030 | -| Property income tax | Rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland | From 6 April 2027 | -| Trading allowance | Rises from £1,000 to £3,000 | From 6 April 2027 | -| Carer's Allowance taper | Above the weekly earnings limit, the allowance is withdrawn £1 for each £1 earned instead of all at once, in England and Wales | During 2030-31 | +| Measure | What changes | When | +| ------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------- | +| Household Energy Payment | A one-off £100 for households in council tax bands A to D in England | From January 2027 | +| Zero VAT on electricity | The 0% rate on household electricity, in force in Great Britain since 1 October 2026, runs three months longer | To 1 July 2027 | +| Fuel duty | The 5p cut continues, and the April 2027 RPI rise moves to 1 July 2027 | To 1 July 2027 | +| Pension Tax Allowance | An income tax reduction for people above State Pension age, or reaching it during the tax year: in full where total income is at most the full new State Pension, tapering above it | 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030 | +| Property income tax | Rates on property income rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland | From 6 April 2027 | +| Trading allowance | Rises from £1,000 to £3,000 | From 6 April 2027 | +| Carer's Allowance taper | Above the weekly earnings limit, the allowance falls £1 for each £1 of earnings instead of ending all at once, in England and Wales | During 2030-31 | Sources: [Budget 2026](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/budget-2026-document/budget-2026-html) and the [policy costings](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026). The Budget makes other changes that reach households, which our dashboard does not model: - **Savings income tax.** From 6 April 2027 the rates on savings income also rise 2 points, to 24%, 44% and 49% across the UK. We give the official costing [below](#savings-income); our own estimate follows with a data update. -- **The Triple Lock.** From April 2030 the State Pension rises each year by the highest of 2.5%, inflation, or the amount needed to keep its value relative to earnings as reached in April 2029. The government estimates this reduces State Pension spending by £15 billion a year by the late 2030s. We analyse it [separately](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/uk-triple-lock-budget-2026). +- **The Triple Lock.** From April 2030 the State Pension rises each year by the highest of 2.5%, inflation, or the amount that keeps its value relative to earnings at its April 2029 level. The government estimates this reduces State Pension spending by £15 billion a year by the late 2030s. We analyse it [separately](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/uk-triple-lock-budget-2026). - **The National Living Wage** rises 3.9% to £13.21 an hour on 1 April 2027, as the Low Pay Commission recommended. - **The Bank Corporation Tax Surcharge** rises from 3% to 6% from 1 January 2027 to 31 March 2028, to help fund the energy support. - Smaller tax and benefit changes for households, with their official costings in Table 2. **Table 2: Other household measures we don't model, official costings (£ million)** -| Measure (number) | What changes | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | -| ----------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | -| Student loans (83) | Interest on Plan 2 and Plan 3 loans capped at 6% from 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2027 | −230 | −172 | −12 | −10 | −3 | −15 | -| Universal Credit (8) | The £2,500 surplus earnings threshold kept for a year from 1 April 2027 | 0 | −142 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -| Mileage rates (5) | 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles from April 2026; 35p above that from April 2027 | −28 | −199 | −222 | −224 | −237 | −245 | -| Bus fares (4) | Single fares capped at £2 in England outside London for 2027, funded by reprioritising DESNZ budgets, which the costing includes | −50 | −181 | +63 | +170 | 0 | 0 | -| Cash ISAs (11) | The cash ISA limit stays at £20,000 | 0 | −4 | −20 | −35 | −52 | −72 | -| Lifetime ISA (39) | Withdrawal charge cut from 25% to 20% for first-time buyers of homes above the £450,000 price cap | −17 | −20 | −21 | −23 | −25 | −26 | -| Founders' Relief (26) | A new Capital Gains Tax relief for qualifying founders, from April 2027 | 0 | −258 | −180 | −261 | −283 | −302 | -| Business Asset Disposal Relief (60) | Lifetime limit cut from £1 million to £500,000 from April 2027 | +3 | +60 | +178 | +253 | +279 | +303 | -| Distributions (49) | Fewer ways for shareholders to take profits out of a company as capital gains where dividend tax fits better, from April 2028 | 0 | 0 | +55 | +802 | +775 | +785 | -| Private hire VAT (59) | Larger operators pay VAT on the full fare from 2 January 2028 | 0 | +93 | +383 | +394 | +409 | +423 | -| Company car tax (86) | Benefit-in-kind rates for 2030-31 set 1 point above 2029-30, up to 40% | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +312 | +343 | - -Source: the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/), each measure's total; the number in brackets is its measure number there, the same as its row in the Budget's [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026). Table 6.1 gives the same totals rounded to the nearest £5 million. A negative number is a cost to the public finances. +| Measure (number) | What changes | 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | +| ----------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | ------: | +| Student loans (83) | A 6% cap on interest on Plan 2 and Plan 3 loans from 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2027 | −230 | −172 | −12 | −10 | −3 | −15 | +| Universal Credit (8) | The £2,500 surplus earnings threshold stays for a year from 1 April 2027 | 0 | −142 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +| Mileage rates (5) | 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles from April 2026; 35p above that from April 2027 | −28 | −199 | −222 | −224 | −237 | −245 | +| Bus fares (4) | A £2 cap on single fares in England outside London for 2027, which the government pays for by reprioritising DESNZ budgets; the costing includes the reprioritisation | −50 | −181 | +63 | +170 | 0 | 0 | +| Cash ISAs (11) | The cash ISA limit stays at £20,000 | 0 | −4 | −20 | −35 | −52 | −72 | +| Lifetime ISA (39) | The withdrawal charge falls from 25% to 20% for first-time buyers of homes above the £450,000 price cap | −17 | −20 | −21 | −23 | −25 | −26 | +| Founders' Relief (26) | A new Capital Gains Tax relief for qualifying founders, from April 2027 | 0 | −258 | −180 | −261 | −283 | −302 | +| Business Asset Disposal Relief (60) | The lifetime limit falls from £1 million to £500,000 from April 2027 | +3 | +60 | +178 | +253 | +279 | +303 | +| Distributions (49) | Fewer ways for shareholders to take profits out of a company as capital gains where dividend tax fits better, from April 2028 | 0 | 0 | +55 | +802 | +775 | +785 | +| Private hire VAT (59) | Larger operators pay VAT on the full fare from 2 January 2028 | 0 | +93 | +383 | +394 | +409 | +423 | +| Company car tax (86) | Benefit-in-kind rates for 2030-31 rise 1 point above 2029-30's, up to 40% | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +312 | +343 | + +Source: the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/), each measure's total; the number in brackets is its measure number there, the same as its row in the Budget's [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026). Table 6.1 rounds the same totals to the nearest £5 million. A negative number is a cost to the public finances. ## The combined effect @@ -122,7 +122,7 @@ In 2026-27 the package raises net income in every decile, and by more as a share We rank households into deciles by their income under the Households Below Average Income definition, adjusted for household size and before housing costs, with each decile holding about a tenth of people. The chart and Table 4 cover only the seven measures in Table 1, and none of the Budget's other measures. -The Treasury's [analysis](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026) of the Budget's effect on households in 2027-28 (its Figures 1.A and 1.B) covers 18 of the Budget's measures (paragraph 1.4). Five of them are among ours. It includes the savings income rate rise, which we leave out, and leaves out the Household Energy Payment and the Carer's Allowance change. So its decile figures cover a different set of policies from ours. It finds that in 2027-28 the lowest-income households gain most as a share of income, that tax rises are concentrated on the highest-income households, and that on average all but the top 20% of households gain. +The Treasury's [analysis](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026) of the Budget's effect on households in 2027-28 (its Figures 1.A and 1.B) covers 18 of the Budget's measures (paragraph 1.4). Five of them are among ours. It includes the savings income rate rise, which we leave out, and leaves out the Household Energy Payment and the Carer's Allowance change. So its decile figures cover a different set of policies from ours. It finds that in 2027-28 the lowest-income households gain most as a share of income, that tax rises fall mostly on the highest-income households, and that on average all but the top 20% of households gain. ### Winners and losers @@ -146,7 +146,7 @@ The Gini index of income inequality falls by 0.17% in 2026-27 and by 0.05% in 20 **Household Energy Payment.** A one-off £100 for households in council tax bands A to D in England, paid from January 2027. We estimate it costs £1,969 million in 2026-27, which at £100 each is 19.7 million households; the government says up to 20 million. It raises net income by £67 per UK household on average. [Our analysis of the energy bill measures](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/budget-2026-energy-bills) has the details. -**Zero VAT on household electricity.** The 0% rate runs to 1 July 2027, and is expected to apply in Northern Ireland from April 2027. Like the Treasury, we cost the whole period, the months already in force this winter included: £840 million in 2026-27 and £353 million in 2027-28. In 2026-27 it raises net income by £29 per household on average, and about 94% of people live in households that gain. See [our energy bills analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/budget-2026-energy-bills). +**Zero VAT on household electricity.** The 0% rate runs to 1 July 2027, and the Budget expects it to apply in Northern Ireland from April 2027. Like the Treasury, we cost the whole period, including the months already in force this winter: £840 million in 2026-27 and £353 million in 2027-28. In 2026-27 it raises net income by £29 per household on average, and about 94% of people live in households that gain. See [our energy bills analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/budget-2026-energy-bills). **Fuel duty.** The 5p cut now runs to 1 July 2027, and the RPI rise planned for April 2027 moves to the same day. We estimate it costs £301 million in 2026-27 and £521 million in 2027-28, including the VAT on the lower pump price. In 2027-28 it raises net income by £18 per household on average. See [our fuel duty analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/fuel-duty-cut-extension). @@ -156,11 +156,11 @@ The Gini index of income inequality falls by 0.17% in 2026-27 and by 0.05% in 20 **Trading allowance.** From 6 April 2027 the first £3,000 of trading and miscellaneous income each year is tax-free, up from £1,000. We estimate it costs £110 million in 2027-28, rising to £130 million in 2031-32. About 1% of people live in households that gain. See [our trading allowance analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/uk-autumn-budget-2026-trading-allowance) and the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). -**Carer's Allowance taper.** Today a carer who earns more than the weekly earnings limit loses all of Carer's Allowance. During 2030-31, once a new IT system is in place, carers in England and Wales will instead keep the allowance less £1 for each £1 earned above the limit. We count half of 2030-31 and estimate a cost of £24 million that year and £48 million in 2031-32. The Budget puts the number of carers helped at around 48,000. See [our Carer's Allowance taper analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/carers-allowance-taper) and the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). +**Carer's Allowance taper.** Today a carer who earns more than the weekly earnings limit loses all of Carer's Allowance. During 2030-31, once a new IT system is in place, carers in England and Wales will instead keep the allowance less £1 for each £1 they earn above the limit. We count half of 2030-31 and estimate a cost of £24 million that year and £48 million in 2031-32. The Budget puts the number of carers who benefit at around 48,000. See [our Carer's Allowance taper analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/carers-allowance-taper) and the [dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026). ## How our estimates compare with the official costings -We compare each measure with the government's costing, certified by the OBR, using the line in the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/) that matches what we model. Fuel duty is the exception: its official figure is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify. The Budget's Table 6.1 rounds each measure's total to the nearest £5 million and includes the measure's other lines, so we give it for context only. +We compare each measure with the government's costing, which the OBR certified, using the line in the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/) that matches what we model. Fuel duty is the exception: its official figure is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify. The Budget's Table 6.1 rounds each measure's total to the nearest £5 million and includes the measure's other lines, so we give it for context only. Our estimates differ from the official costings for four main reasons: timing (we score each tax year's liability; the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year), coverage (we use household survey data, so we estimate less fully the effects outside households and on incomes the survey records thinly), behaviour (ours are static; most official costings include responses) and scope (the parts of a policy each models). @@ -190,7 +190,7 @@ Our estimates differ from the official costings for four main reasons: timing (w | | Official: Welfare inside cap | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | −33 | −69 | | | Table 6.1 total | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | −40 | −80 | -Official: the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/), measures 1, 2, 3, 52, 61, 15 and 7, the line or lines that match what we model, named as the table names them. Table 6.1 total: HM Treasury, [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026), rows 1, 2, 3, 52, 61, 15 and 7. Its totals also include the OBR table's other lines for each measure that aren't zero: Other AME (current) for zero VAT; PSCE in RDEL, Scottish BGA (current) and Scottish self-financed expenditure for the Pension Tax Allowance and the trading allowance; Onshore CT, Scottish BGA (current) and Scottish self-financed expenditure for property income tax; and Scottish BGA (current) for the Carer's Allowance taper. +Official: the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/), measures 1, 2, 3, 52, 61, 15 and 7, the line or lines that match what we model, under the table's own names. Table 6.1 total: HM Treasury, [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026), rows 1, 2, 3, 52, 61, 15 and 7. Its totals also include the OBR table's other lines for each measure that aren't zero: Other AME (current) for zero VAT; PSCE in RDEL, Scottish BGA (current) and Scottish self-financed expenditure for the Pension Tax Allowance and the trading allowance; Onshore CT, Scottish BGA (current) and Scottish self-financed expenditure for property income tax; and Scottish BGA (current) for the Carer's Allowance taper. Why each differs. The reasons come from the [dashboard's notes](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026?tab=dashboard&sub=finances) on its comparison with the official costings, from the OBR's October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook and from the Budget documents. The notes compare our figures with Table 6.1's totals and also draw on further runs of our model, so some of their figures aren't in Table 6 or in our published results: @@ -235,7 +235,7 @@ We are also working on: ## Methodology -Our estimates come from PolicyEngine's [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026), which runs the `policyengine` Python package (version 6.11.1) with PolicyEngine UK (version 2.151.0) on Microcosm UK 2024-25, our survey-based dataset calibrated before the Budget. Prices and earnings follow the OBR's [October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/): every simulation, with and without the Budget's measures, uses its growth rates for CPI, RPI, average earnings and house prices. +Our estimates come from PolicyEngine's [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026), which runs the `policyengine` Python package (version 6.11.1) with PolicyEngine UK (version 2.151.0) on Microcosm UK 2024-25, our survey-based dataset, which we calibrated before the Budget. Prices and earnings follow the OBR's [October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/): every simulation, with and without the Budget's measures, uses its growth rates for CPI, RPI, average earnings and house prices. - **Static.** Each estimate holds behaviour fixed: people work, earn, save and spend as they would without the measure. - **Tax years.** We score each tax year's liability, and put costs and gains in the fiscal year they relate to; the energy payment, for example, falls in 2026-27. @@ -243,6 +243,6 @@ Our estimates come from PolicyEngine's [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://ww - **The package.** The combined results are one simulation of the seven measures together, each modelled exactly as in its own run. - **Small samples.** The dashboard withholds any result that rests on fewer than three survey households. For the package in 2030-31 and 2031-32, it withholds the results for two income deciles and the average change across all households, the same cells it withholds for the Carer's Allowance taper on its own. -Every PolicyEngine figure in this briefing comes from the dashboard's published results (manifest revision 17), each read from files that match the checksums in their receipt; the exceptions are the further figures quoted from the dashboard's notes on the comparison with the official costings, which come from further runs of our model. Every official figure comes from the OBR's October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook or the Budget documents linked above. +Every PolicyEngine figure in this briefing comes from the dashboard's published results (manifest revision 17), and we read each from files that match the checksums in their receipt; the exceptions are the further figures we quote from the dashboard's notes on the comparison with the official costings, which come from further runs of our model. Every official figure comes from the OBR's October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook or the Budget documents we link above. _PolicyEngine's UK Budget analysis is funded by the [Nuffield Foundation](https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/). The views expressed are ours and not necessarily the Foundation's._ From 9e475c32cf5bbadb4a06f7bcbb55380a922885fa Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 18:16:54 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 19/21] Briefing: finish the active-voice pass Twelve more sentences from the independent voice sweep, among them the deciles definition (twice), the energy payment's start, Self Assessment timing (three places) and the fuel duty scale-up. The article paraphrases the dashboard's own passive note wording, and the checker traces the new phrases to the same rendered notes. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- .../uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 24 +++++++++---------- 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index 99d1f04d2..20c0f50ae 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -69,7 +69,7 @@ The package costs £3.11 billion in 2026-27, almost all of it the energy payment | Official, the same seven measures | −3,935 | −1,122 | +235 | +85 | +248 | +150 | | Table 6.1 total, the same measures | −3,955 | −1,095 | +260 | +120 | +280 | +180 | -Official: the sum of the seven measures' official lines in Table 6, from the OBR's detailed forecast table 1.1. Table 6.1 total, for context: the sum of rows 1, 2, 3, 7, 15, 52 and 61 of the Budget's [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026). A negative number is a cost to the public finances. The package differs from the sum of the seven measures run one at a time by less than £1 million in every year. We explain the differences from the official costings [below](#how-our-estimates-compare-with-the-official-costings). +Official: the sum of the seven measures' official lines in Table 6, from the OBR's detailed forecast table 1.1. Table 6.1 total, for context: the sum of rows 1, 2, 3, 7, 15, 52 and 61 of the Budget's [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026). A negative number is a cost to the public finances. The package differs from the sum of the seven measures, when we run each on its own, by less than £1 million in every year. We explain the differences from the official costings [below](#how-our-estimates-compare-with-the-official-costings). ### Household net income by income decile @@ -120,7 +120,7 @@ In 2026-27 the package raises net income in every decile, and by more as a share | 10 (highest) | +98 | −12 | −51 | | All | +107 | +21 | −6 | -We rank households into deciles by their income under the Households Below Average Income definition, adjusted for household size and before housing costs, with each decile holding about a tenth of people. The chart and Table 4 cover only the seven measures in Table 1, and none of the Budget's other measures. +We rank households into deciles by their income before housing costs under the Households Below Average Income definition, which adjusts for household size, with each decile holding about a tenth of people. The chart and Table 4 cover only the seven measures in Table 1, and none of the Budget's other measures. The Treasury's [analysis](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026) of the Budget's effect on households in 2027-28 (its Figures 1.A and 1.B) covers 18 of the Budget's measures (paragraph 1.4). Five of them are among ours. It includes the savings income rate rise, which we leave out, and leaves out the Household Energy Payment and the Carer's Allowance change. So its decile figures cover a different set of policies from ours. It finds that in 2027-28 the lowest-income households gain most as a share of income, that tax rises fall mostly on the highest-income households, and that on average all but the top 20% of households gain. @@ -144,11 +144,11 @@ The Gini index of income inequality falls by 0.17% in 2026-27 and by 0.05% in 20 ## Measure by measure -**Household Energy Payment.** A one-off £100 for households in council tax bands A to D in England, paid from January 2027. We estimate it costs £1,969 million in 2026-27, which at £100 each is 19.7 million households; the government says up to 20 million. It raises net income by £67 per UK household on average. [Our analysis of the energy bill measures](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/budget-2026-energy-bills) has the details. +**Household Energy Payment.** A one-off £100 for households in council tax bands A to D in England, with payments from January 2027. We estimate it costs £1,969 million in 2026-27, which at £100 each is 19.7 million households; the government says up to 20 million. It raises net income by £67 per UK household on average. [Our analysis of the energy bill measures](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/budget-2026-energy-bills) has the details. **Zero VAT on household electricity.** The 0% rate runs to 1 July 2027, and the Budget expects it to apply in Northern Ireland from April 2027. Like the Treasury, we cost the whole period, including the months already in force this winter: £840 million in 2026-27 and £353 million in 2027-28. In 2026-27 it raises net income by £29 per household on average, and about 94% of people live in households that gain. See [our energy bills analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/budget-2026-energy-bills). -**Fuel duty.** The 5p cut now runs to 1 July 2027, and the RPI rise planned for April 2027 moves to the same day. We estimate it costs £301 million in 2026-27 and £521 million in 2027-28, including the VAT on the lower pump price. In 2027-28 it raises net income by £18 per household on average. See [our fuel duty analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/fuel-duty-cut-extension). +**Fuel duty.** The 5p cut now runs to 1 July 2027, and the RPI rise due in April 2027 moves to the same day. We estimate it costs £301 million in 2026-27 and £521 million in 2027-28, including the VAT on the lower pump price. In 2027-28 it raises net income by £18 per household on average. See [our fuel duty analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/fuel-duty-cut-extension). **Pension Tax Allowance.** From 6 April 2027 to 5 April 2030, people above State Pension age, or reaching it during the tax year, whose total income is no more than the full new State Pension pay no income tax; in 2027-28 the allowance is worth up to £94, and above that income it falls by £1 for every £3. We estimate a net cost of £30 million in 2027-28, £83 million in 2028-29 and £144 million in 2029-30, after lower spending on Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction. About 3% of people live in households that gain in 2029-30. See [our Pension Tax Allowance analysis](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/research/pension-tax-allowance). @@ -162,7 +162,7 @@ The Gini index of income inequality falls by 0.17% in 2026-27 and by 0.05% in 20 We compare each measure with the government's costing, which the OBR certified, using the line in the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/) that matches what we model. Fuel duty is the exception: its official figure is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify. The Budget's Table 6.1 rounds each measure's total to the nearest £5 million and includes the measure's other lines, so we give it for context only. -Our estimates differ from the official costings for four main reasons: timing (we score each tax year's liability; the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year), coverage (we use household survey data, so we estimate less fully the effects outside households and on incomes the survey records thinly), behaviour (ours are static; most official costings include responses) and scope (the parts of a policy each models). +Our estimates differ from the official costings for four main reasons: timing (we score each tax year's liability; the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which Self Assessment payments can fall in a later year), coverage (we use household survey data, so we estimate less fully the effects outside households and on incomes the survey records thinly), behaviour (ours are static; most official costings include responses) and scope (the parts of a policy each models). **Table 6: PolicyEngine and official costings by measure (£ million)** @@ -194,12 +194,12 @@ Official: the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-an Why each differs. The reasons come from the [dashboard's notes](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026?tab=dashboard&sub=finances) on its comparison with the official costings, from the OBR's October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook and from the Budget documents. The notes compare our figures with Table 6.1's totals and also draw on further runs of our model, so some of their figures aren't in Table 6 or in our published results: -- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours falls 25% below the official £2,627 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the payment in England, and ours is 94% of that. At £100 each, the up to 20 million households the Budget names take up to £2,000 million of it; neither the OBR nor the Budget itemises the rest. -- **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours exceeds the OBR's VAT line by £106 million (14%) in 2026-27 and by £57 million (19%) in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's domestic electricity volumes at average prices paid, grown with CPI, and the official costing from ONS consumer spending, which is 10% to 12% lower. -- **Fuel duty (coverage).** The official figure is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify. Ours is £273 million lower in 2026-27 and £261 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, about £13 billion of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy. Scaled up to the OBR's fuel duty receipts, our fuel duty cost would be about £450 million in 2026-27 and £760 million in 2027-28. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes £50 million and £87 million of VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. The rest of the 2026-27 gap fits the official costing if it assumes the full 5p returns on 1 January 2027 (about £555 million on 45 billion litres), where the law brings it back as 3p then and 2p more from 1 March (about £410 million). +- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours falls 25% below the official £2,627 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households rising energy bills hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the payment in England, and ours is 94% of that. At £100 each, the up to 20 million households the Budget names take up to £2,000 million of it; neither the OBR nor the Budget itemises the rest. +- **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours exceeds the OBR's VAT line by £106 million (14%) in 2026-27 and by £57 million (19%) in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's domestic electricity volumes at the average prices households pay, rising with CPI, and the official costing from ONS consumer spending, which is 10% to 12% lower. +- **Fuel duty (coverage).** The official figure is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify. Ours is £273 million lower in 2026-27 and £261 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, about £13 billion of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy. If we scale our estimate up to the OBR's fuel duty receipts, our fuel duty cost would be about £450 million in 2026-27 and £760 million in 2027-28. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes £50 million and £87 million of VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. The rest of the 2026-27 gap fits the official costing if it assumes the full 5p returns on 1 January 2027 (about £555 million on 45 billion litres), where the law brings it back as 3p then and 2p more from 1 March (about £410 million). - **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Our income tax cost is £42 million, £112 million and £193 million in 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30. The OBR's is £44 million, £83 million and £144 million (detailed forecast table 1.1), so ours is about 5% lower in 2027-28 and 35% and 34% higher in the next two years. We estimate that about 670,000 people gain in 2027-28, against the Treasury's 500,000. Table 6 shows our net cost, after Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction take back part of the income tax cut; the measure's Welfare inside cap line in the OBR's table is zero. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance at £182 and £250 a year, from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The official costing also has figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32. The Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for these figures after the allowance ends; ours are zero. -- **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts tax paid through Self Assessment in a later year than the one it's owed for: the OBR adds almost no Self Assessment receipts from the savings and property rate rises in 2027-28 and £1.0 billion in 2028-29 (Economic and fiscal outlook, Table 4.4), so the official figures for those two years aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours exceeds the OBR's income tax line by 9% to 11%. The official costing includes small behavioural responses, more tax-motivated incorporation and higher non-compliance, that reduce the yield by £0.1 billion a year (Economic and fiscal outlook, paragraph 3.17); ours leaves them out. -- **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours falls £46 million to £103 million a year below the OBR's income tax and NICs lines (27% to 47%), with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain, because we leave them unrelieved under the current £1,000 allowance. In 2027-28 the OBR's lines have no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard gives the reason in its description of the comparison: the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which tax paid through Self Assessment can fall in a later year, so a change such as the trading allowance can appear about a year later in them than in ours. +- **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts Self Assessment payments in a later year than the tax year they cover: the OBR adds almost no Self Assessment receipts from the savings and property rate rises in 2027-28 and £1.0 billion in 2028-29 (Economic and fiscal outlook, Table 4.4), so the official figures for those two years aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours exceeds the OBR's income tax line by 9% to 11%. The official costing includes small behavioural responses, more tax-motivated incorporation and higher non-compliance, that reduce the yield by £0.1 billion a year (Economic and fiscal outlook, paragraph 3.17); ours leaves them out. +- **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours falls £46 million to £103 million a year below the OBR's income tax and NICs lines (27% to 47%), with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain, because we leave them unrelieved under the current £1,000 allowance. In 2027-28 the OBR's lines have no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard gives the reason in its description of the comparison: the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which Self Assessment payments can fall in a later year, so a change such as the trading allowance can appear about a year later in them than in ours. - **Carer's Allowance taper.** The measure's total in the OBR's table is £38 million in 2030-31 and £79 million in 2031-32, before the Treasury rounds it to the nearest £5 million. It includes £5 million and £10 million of extra block grant for Scotland, where Carer's Allowance is devolved, and has no line for income tax. Its Carer's Allowance and Universal Credit spending is £33 million and £69 million (OBR, Economic and fiscal outlook, October 2026, detailed forecast table 1.1, measure 7). Ours, £24 million and £48 million, is net of the income tax on the higher allowance (£15 million and £32 million); before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million, about a sixth more than the OBR's spending. ## Savings income @@ -239,8 +239,8 @@ Our estimates come from PolicyEngine's [Autumn Budget 2026 dashboard](https://ww - **Static.** Each estimate holds behaviour fixed: people work, earn, save and spend as they would without the measure. - **Tax years.** We score each tax year's liability, and put costs and gains in the fiscal year they relate to; the energy payment, for example, falls in 2026-27. -- **Net income.** Changes in household net income include changes in the VAT and fuel duty households pay, so a cut to either raises net income. Deciles rank households by their income under the Households Below Average Income definition, adjusted for household size and before housing costs, with each decile holding about a tenth of people. -- **The package.** The combined results are one simulation of the seven measures together, each modelled exactly as in its own run. +- **Net income.** Changes in household net income include changes in the VAT and fuel duty households pay, so a cut to either raises net income. Deciles rank households by their income before housing costs under the Households Below Average Income definition, which adjusts for household size, with each decile holding about a tenth of people. +- **The package.** The combined results come from one simulation of the seven measures together, which models each exactly as in its own run. - **Small samples.** The dashboard withholds any result that rests on fewer than three survey households. For the package in 2030-31 and 2031-32, it withholds the results for two income deciles and the average change across all households, the same cells it withholds for the Carer's Allowance taper on its own. Every PolicyEngine figure in this briefing comes from the dashboard's published results (manifest revision 17), and we read each from files that match the checksums in their receipt; the exceptions are the further figures we quote from the dashboard's notes on the comparison with the official costings, which come from further runs of our model. Every official figure comes from the OBR's October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook or the Budget documents we link above. From a65a1823a8d2af96931a0bd3c178c37c1b5a28fe Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 18:27:51 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 20/21] Briefing: answer the r5 and r6 wording findings MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit - The notes' basis now reads "The notes explain the comparisons", true of the merged notes and of dashboard #303's (Sol r5, finding 4). - Zero VAT: Sol r6's sentence verbatim, so "rising with CPI" can't read as a claim about actual prices (r6, 1). - Energy payment: the councils' £100 million targets "the households that rising energy bills hit hardest", from the Budget's own text ("households acutely impacted by rising energy bills"), now traced to it (r6, 2). - Fuel duty: "Scaling our fuel duty cost up to..." names what we scale (r6, 3). - Carer's Allowance: "where the Scottish Government has responsibility for Carer's Allowance", Sol r6's active replacement for "is devolved" (r6, 4). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- .../posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md | 10 +++++----- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md index 20c0f50ae..75cfef1c9 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/uk-autumn-budget-2026-briefing.md @@ -192,15 +192,15 @@ Our estimates differ from the official costings for four main reasons: timing (w Official: the OBR's [detailed forecast table 1.1](https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2026/), measures 1, 2, 3, 52, 61, 15 and 7, the line or lines that match what we model, under the table's own names. Table 6.1 total: HM Treasury, [Table 6.1](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-documents-for-budget-2026), rows 1, 2, 3, 52, 61, 15 and 7. Its totals also include the OBR table's other lines for each measure that aren't zero: Other AME (current) for zero VAT; PSCE in RDEL, Scottish BGA (current) and Scottish self-financed expenditure for the Pension Tax Allowance and the trading allowance; Onshore CT, Scottish BGA (current) and Scottish self-financed expenditure for property income tax; and Scottish BGA (current) for the Carer's Allowance taper. -Why each differs. The reasons come from the [dashboard's notes](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026?tab=dashboard&sub=finances) on its comparison with the official costings, from the OBR's October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook and from the Budget documents. The notes compare our figures with Table 6.1's totals and also draw on further runs of our model, so some of their figures aren't in Table 6 or in our published results: +Why each differs. The reasons come from the [dashboard's notes](https://www.policyengine.org/uk/budgets/autumn-2026?tab=dashboard&sub=finances) on its comparison with the official costings, from the OBR's October 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook and from the Budget documents. The notes explain the comparisons and also draw on further runs of our model, so some of their figures aren't in Table 6 or in our published results: -- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours falls 25% below the official £2,627 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target the households rising energy bills hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the payment in England, and ours is 94% of that. At £100 each, the up to 20 million households the Budget names take up to £2,000 million of it; neither the OBR nor the Budget itemises the rest. -- **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours exceeds the OBR's VAT line by £106 million (14%) in 2026-27 and by £57 million (19%) in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: ours from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's domestic electricity volumes at the average prices households pay, rising with CPI, and the official costing from ONS consumer spending, which is 10% to 12% lower. -- **Fuel duty (coverage).** The official figure is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify. Ours is £273 million lower in 2026-27 and £261 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, about £13 billion of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy. If we scale our estimate up to the OBR's fuel duty receipts, our fuel duty cost would be about £450 million in 2026-27 and £760 million in 2027-28. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes £50 million and £87 million of VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. The rest of the 2026-27 gap fits the official costing if it assumes the full 5p returns on 1 January 2027 (about £555 million on 45 billion litres), where the law brings it back as 3p then and 2p more from 1 March (about £410 million). +- **Household Energy Payment (scope).** Ours falls 25% below the official £2,627 million because the official figure also covers two things we don't model: the devolved governments' share of the funding (about £425 million, our estimate using the Barnett formula) and £100 million for councils in England to target support at the households that rising energy bills hit hardest. Without them, about £2,100 million remains for the payment in England, and ours is 94% of that. At £100 each, the up to 20 million households the Budget names take up to £2,000 million of it; neither the OBR nor the Budget itemises the rest. +- **Zero VAT on electricity (coverage).** Ours exceeds the OBR's VAT line by £106 million (14%) in 2026-27 and by £57 million (19%) in 2027-28. The official costing also covers charities, residential care and some businesses, and counts households switching from gas to electricity; both make the official figure larger, so neither explains the gap. The two start from different spending: we calculate ours from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's domestic electricity volumes and the average prices households pay, then project that spending using CPI; the official costing starts from ONS consumer spending, which is 10% to 12% lower. +- **Fuel duty (coverage).** The official figure is the government's estimate, which the OBR used but could not certify. Ours is £273 million lower in 2026-27 and £261 million lower in 2027-28. Most of the gap is coverage: we count only the petrol and diesel households buy, about £13 billion of the £24 billion of fuel duty the OBR forecasts for 2026-27, while the official costing covers all taxable fuel, including fuel businesses buy. Scaling our fuel duty cost up to the OBR's fuel duty receipts would make it about £450 million in 2026-27 and £760 million in 2027-28. VAT and behaviour narrow the gap: ours includes £50 million and £87 million of VAT on the lower pump price, which the official fuel duty figure leaves out, and the official costing's demand response makes its cost smaller. The rest of the 2026-27 gap fits the official costing if it assumes the full 5p returns on 1 January 2027 (about £555 million on 45 billion litres), where the law brings it back as 3p then and 2p more from 1 March (about £410 million). - **Pension Tax Allowance (scope).** Our income tax cost is £42 million, £112 million and £193 million in 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30. The OBR's is £44 million, £83 million and £144 million (detailed forecast table 1.1), so ours is about 5% lower in 2027-28 and 35% and 34% higher in the next two years. We estimate that about 670,000 people gain in 2027-28, against the Treasury's 500,000. Table 6 shows our net cost, after Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction take back part of the income tax cut; the measure's Welfare inside cap line in the OBR's table is zero. For 2028-29 and 2029-30 we set the allowance at £182 and £250 a year, from the October 2026 forecast of the State Pension. The official costing also has figures for 2030-31 and 2031-32. The Treasury's policy costing note gives no reason for these figures after the allowance ends; ours are zero. - **Property income tax (timing and behaviour).** The official costing puts Self Assessment payments in a later year than the tax year they cover: the OBR adds almost no Self Assessment receipts from the savings and property rate rises in 2027-28 and £1.0 billion in 2028-29 (Economic and fiscal outlook, Table 4.4), so the official figures for those two years aren't comparable with our tax-year figures. From 2029-30 ours exceeds the OBR's income tax line by 9% to 11%. The official costing includes small behavioural responses, more tax-motivated incorporation and higher non-compliance, that reduce the yield by £0.1 billion a year (Economic and fiscal outlook, paragraph 3.17); ours leaves them out. - **Trading allowance (behaviour and coverage).** From 2028-29 ours falls £46 million to £103 million a year below the OBR's income tax and NICs lines (27% to 47%), with the largest gap in 2028-29. The official costing includes people switching from deducting their actual expenses to the larger allowance, which we don't model. Without gross receipts in the survey data, we give traders with profits above £3,000 nothing from the change and give miscellaneous income no allowance at all, while for some profits between £1,000 and £3,000 we overstate the gain, because we leave them unrelieved under the current £1,000 allowance. In 2027-28 the OBR's lines have no cost and ours has £110 million. The dashboard gives the reason in its description of the comparison: the official costings are on a National Accounts basis, in which Self Assessment payments can fall in a later year, so a change such as the trading allowance can appear about a year later in them than in ours. -- **Carer's Allowance taper.** The measure's total in the OBR's table is £38 million in 2030-31 and £79 million in 2031-32, before the Treasury rounds it to the nearest £5 million. It includes £5 million and £10 million of extra block grant for Scotland, where Carer's Allowance is devolved, and has no line for income tax. Its Carer's Allowance and Universal Credit spending is £33 million and £69 million (OBR, Economic and fiscal outlook, October 2026, detailed forecast table 1.1, measure 7). Ours, £24 million and £48 million, is net of the income tax on the higher allowance (£15 million and £32 million); before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million, about a sixth more than the OBR's spending. +- **Carer's Allowance taper.** The measure's total in the OBR's table is £38 million in 2030-31 and £79 million in 2031-32, before the Treasury rounds it to the nearest £5 million. It includes £5 million and £10 million of extra block grant for Scotland, where the Scottish Government has responsibility for Carer's Allowance, and has no line for income tax. Its Carer's Allowance and Universal Credit spending is £33 million and £69 million (OBR, Economic and fiscal outlook, October 2026, detailed forecast table 1.1, measure 7). Ours, £24 million and £48 million, is net of the income tax on the higher allowance (£15 million and £32 million); before that tax, ours is £39 million and £79 million, about a sixth more than the OBR's spending. ## Savings income From b87ba4b8f13f11e663df32e21151b03a12da29e9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Max Ghenis Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 18:53:23 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 21/21] Carer's Allowance taper post: say we will update the 2030-31 estimates Adds the sentence Max approved in the briefing's "What we're improving" section, after the paragraph's dashboard sentence, as Sol's r5 review asked (finding 3). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- app/src/data/posts/articles/carers-allowance-taper.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/app/src/data/posts/articles/carers-allowance-taper.md b/app/src/data/posts/articles/carers-allowance-taper.md index 76bdee65f..947231140 100644 --- a/app/src/data/posts/articles/carers-allowance-taper.md +++ b/app/src/data/posts/articles/carers-allowance-taper.md @@ -745,7 +745,7 @@ The table and chart leave out the £1 step at the limit itself. Without the tape ## Population estimates -We also ran the measure on PolicyEngine UK's microsimulation model, which uses survey data on UK households; we projected the data to 2030-31 and 2031-32 on the OBR's October 2026 forecast. The estimate is static: carers do not change how much they work, and take-up of Carer's Allowance follows the assumptions in PolicyEngine's data. This is the run behind the figures for this measure on PolicyEngine's Autumn Budget dashboard, split here into its parts. The model applies half a year of the taper in 2030-31, because the taper starts at some point in that year. Like the dashboard, the run keeps PolicyEngine UK's current-law limit of £204. Unlike the worked examples, it does not yet count the PAYE on the allowance against Universal Credit earnings ([regulation 55(5)(b)](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/376/regulation/55)); with that adjustment, our calculation gives a net cost of about £28 million in 2030-31 and £55 million in 2031-32. +We also ran the measure on PolicyEngine UK's microsimulation model, which uses survey data on UK households; we projected the data to 2030-31 and 2031-32 on the OBR's October 2026 forecast. The estimate is static: carers do not change how much they work, and take-up of Carer's Allowance follows the assumptions in PolicyEngine's data. This is the run behind the figures for this measure on PolicyEngine's Autumn Budget dashboard, split here into its parts. We will update the 2030-31 population estimates after correcting how the taper interacts with overlapping benefits, such as the State Pension. The model applies half a year of the taper in 2030-31, because the taper starts at some point in that year. Like the dashboard, the run keeps PolicyEngine UK's current-law limit of £204. Unlike the worked examples, it does not yet count the PAYE on the allowance against Universal Credit earnings ([regulation 55(5)(b)](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/376/regulation/55)); with that adjustment, our calculation gives a net cost of about £28 million in 2030-31 and £55 million in 2031-32. | £ million, cost to the Exchequer | 2030-31 | 2031-32 | | -------------------------------- | -------: | -------: |