Autumn Budget 2026:
Wednesday 28 October

When is the Autumn Budget 2026?

The Budget statement is delivered in the House of Commons, traditionally after Prime Minister's Questions. HM Treasury publishes the full Budget document and the accompanying tax-measure notes on GOV.UK within minutes of the speech ending, and the OBR's Economic and fiscal outlook lands alongside it. Anything described as a Budget measure before 28 October is speculation, not policy — including in the run-up, when unattributed briefing to newspapers is routine.

Date confirmed in advance by HM Treasury. This page is rewritten on Budget day itself, from "what is confirmed" to "what was announced".

Autumn Budget 2026 summary: where every tax stands going in

Figures for the 2026-27 tax year (6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027), checked against GOV.UK, HMRC, DWP and legislation.gov.uk on 11 September 2026. Scotland sets its own income tax bands, and Scotland and Wales have their own property transaction taxes. Nothing in the last column is a prediction that it will change.

What is already confirmed for April 2027

Several changes affecting ISAs, pensions and inheritance tax were announced at earlier fiscal events and take effect on 6 April 2027 — the start of the 2027-28 tax year. They are already on the record and do not depend on what is said on 28 October, though a Budget can always amend them. The status column states plainly whether each one is law yet.

Sources: GOV.UK "ISA reform 2027: anti-circumvention rules" factsheet; Autumn Budget 2024 (pensions and inheritance tax); Budget 2025 (threshold freeze to April 2031).

The Cash ISA limit falls to £12,000 for under-65s

From 6 April 2027 the amount that can be paid into a Cash ISA in a tax year falls from £20,000 to £12,000 for savers under 65. The overall ISA allowance is unchanged at £20,000 — so the other £8,000 can still be used, but it has to go into a Stocks & Shares ISA, an Innovative Finance ISA or a Lifetime ISA rather than cash. Savers aged 65 and over keep the full £20,000 cash entitlement, and that entitlement starts in the tax year in which they turn 65.

Existing Cash ISA balances are not affected — the change is to the annual subscription limit, not to money already sheltered. A separate anti-circumvention rule blocks under-65s from transferring money out of a Stocks & Shares or Innovative Finance ISA into a Cash ISA; transfers in the other direction remain allowed, and the restriction is disapplied for those aged 65 and over.

Model your own cash subscription under the £12,000 limit →

A 22% charge on cash held inside a Stocks & Shares ISA

The second half of the same reform package applies a flat 22% charge to the interest paid on uninvested cash held inside a non-Cash ISA — a Stocks & Shares ISA or an Innovative Finance ISA — also from 6 April 2027. It is a charge on the interest, not on the cash balance itself, and it does not touch shares, funds, bonds or dividends held in the wrapper, which keep their existing tax treatment. Cash ISAs are unaffected: interest there stays tax-free.

Money market funds are not classified as cash for this purpose, so they escape the charge — provided they are not 100% of the ISA, which requires holding at least one other qualifying investment. On £10,000 of cash at 4%, the £400 of interest attracts an £88 charge, leaving £312 net and an effective rate of about 3.12%. The charge is levied on ISA managers, and is expected to reach savers as a lower net cash rate rather than as a separate bill.

Work out what the 22% charge costs on your ISA cash →

Unused pensions join your estate for inheritance tax

Announced at Autumn Budget 2024 and confirmed since, most unused defined-contribution pension funds, drawdown funds and certain defined-benefit death benefits come into the scope of inheritance tax for deaths on or after 6 April 2027. Until then a pension pot generally sits outside the estate, which is why pensions have been used as an estate-planning wrapper. From that date the pot is added to everything else and tested against the same thresholds.

Spouses and civil partners remain exempt — an entire estate can pass between them tax-free, and unused nil-rate bands still transfer. The interaction that catches people out is the one with income tax after age 75: a pot inside the estate can face inheritance tax and then income tax in the beneficiary's hands. The government has estimated the change affects roughly 8% of estates.

One more pension date is already law, and it is closer than most coverage suggests: under section 10 of the Finance Act 2022 the normal minimum pension age rises from 55 to 57 on 6 April 2028. HMRC published draft transitional regulations on 6 August 2026 for people aged 55 or 56 on 5 April 2028 who have already become entitled to a pension or lump sum, so that payments made on or after that date still count as authorised; the technical consultation closes at 11:59pm on 28 September 2026.

See your estate before and after the April 2027 pension change →

The State Pension: how the April 2027 rise will be set

The full new State Pension is £241.30 a week in 2026-27, up 4.8% from £230.25 a week in 2025-26 under the triple lock, and the basic State Pension for people who reached State Pension age before 6 April 2016 is £184.90 a week. The April 2027 increase does not need a new Budget policy: under the triple lock the government has committed to, both rise by whichever is highest of three numbers.

• Earnings growth — annual growth in average weekly earnings for May to July 2026, in the ONS labour market release scheduled for 15 September 2026.
• CPI inflation — the 12 months to September 2026, in the ONS release scheduled for 21 October 2026.
• 2.5% — the floor, if both figures come in lower.

Neither decisive figure had been published when this section was written on 11 September 2026, so this page states no April 2027 rate. The arithmetic can be stated: on the full new State Pension, every percentage point of uprating is worth about £2.41 a week, or about £125 a year. Last year the rise was set in the Work and Pensions Secretary's statutory review, published as a written statement to Parliament on Budget day, 26 November 2025: 4.8% in line with earnings growth for May to July 2025, with most increases taking effect from 6 April 2026.

What the State Pension is, and who gets the full rate →

Frozen thresholds are doing the heavy lifting

The inheritance-tax nil-rate band stays at £325,000 and the residence nil-rate band at £175,000 until 5 April 2031. Neither rate nor threshold changes — but wages, house prices and pension pots keep rising against a fixed line, so more estates and more income cross it each year. That is fiscal drag, and it raises revenue without a single announced tax rise.

The same mechanism runs through income tax. The Personal Allowance taper above £100,000 creates an effective 60% marginal band that has not moved with earnings, and the Personal Savings Allowance has been £1,000 for basic-rate and £500 for higher-rate taxpayers since April 2016. Freezes rarely lead a Budget speech; they are usually the largest single number in the accompanying documents.

Fiscal drag calculator — what the freeze costs you → · Inheritance tax calculator → · The £100K tax trap →

The electricity VAT cut expires four months after the Budget

On 21 July 2026 the Government cut VAT on domestic electricity from the 5% reduced rate to a 0% zero rate, effective 1 October 2026 and worth around £45 a year off the Ofgem price cap. This is confirmed and already priced into Ofgem's October cap, which publishes the electricity unit rate of 26.32p/kWh and the 54.83p/day standing charge VAT-free.

What makes it a Budget item is its end date. GOV.UK describes the measure as funded for the 2026-27 financial year, and Ofgem bounds the VAT-free period at 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027 — 182 days. Whether the zero rate continues past that is a decision for 28 October, and no extension has been announced. Two other limits are routinely dropped in coverage: it applies to electricity only, so domestic gas stays at 5%, and to Great Britain only, with Northern Ireland remaining at 5% under Windsor Framework VAT rules.

Electricity VAT calculator — what 0% saves on your own usage →

What is not known yet

This is a new Chancellor's first Budget, and no measure is policy until it is announced on 28 October. Rather than publish predictions, here is an explicit list of the open questions this page will answer on the day:

• Income tax and National Insurance rates and thresholds — whether any freeze is extended, shortened or ended.
• Whether the April 2027 ISA reform survives unchanged. Draft regulations were published on 16 July 2026 and their technical consultation closed on 2 August 2026, but they have not been laid before Parliament, so the £12,000 limit and the 22% charge are announced rather than legislated.
• What replaces the Lifetime ISA, and when. HM Treasury's First Time Buyer ISA consultation closed on 18 August 2026 and GOV.UK lists it as closed with responses under analysis; no outcome has been published. The document settles the shape of the product — first-home purchase only, no upper age limit, no withdrawal charge, bonus paid on subscriptions at the point of purchase — but expressly defers the bonus level, the annual subscription limit, the property price cap and the launch date to “a future fiscal event”. 28 October is the next scheduled one. Any April 2028 start date quoted before then is press inference, not a figure in the consultation. What is settled and what is not →
• The April 2027 State Pension increase — set by the triple lock rather than by a Budget choice, but neither of its two decisive ONS figures is published yet.
• Pension tax relief and the tax-free lump sum — recurring speculation ahead of every Budget, and not a confirmed measure in any of them so far.
• Capital gains tax and dividend rates, and the annual exempt amount.
• Stamp duty thresholds — the wider council-tax and land-value reform is no longer an open question for this Budget; see what has been ruled out below.
• The OBR forecast, which sets the fiscal headroom the Chancellor is working inside and often explains the measures better than the speech does.

Nothing in this list is a prediction that it will change. It is a list of what has not been decided in public.

What has already been ruled out

Two of the loudest stories of the summer are no longer live, which is worth knowing before acting on advice written while they still were.

• Replacing stamp duty and council tax with an annual property or land value tax. Reported in late August 2026 as not going ahead — no immediate changes to stamp duty or council tax are planned, which ended a summer of speculation. The context most coverage omits is that Prime Minister Andy Burnham had personally advocated a land value tax in place of both before taking office, which is exactly why the speculation ran as hard as it did. Read the scope precisely: this is ruled out for this Budget, not abandoned as an idea. Wider property-tax reform remains a live longer-term debate, and a page telling you the question is closed permanently is overreading it.
• Rises in the headline rates of income tax, VAT or National Insurance. Ruled out by the manifesto commitment the Government has said it will honour. Note the precise wording, because it is where most summaries go wrong: the pledge covers the rates. It does not cover thresholds, and the freeze on those is doing a great deal of work — which is why the income-tax question stays on the open list above rather than moving down here. What the freeze costs you →

Sourced from reporting rather than from a Treasury document, and dated accordingly — a statement that something is not planned is not the same class of fact as a published rate. Like everything else here it is provisional until the Chancellor stands up on 28 October.

The theme nobody is covering: money out of Westminster

Chancellor John Healey has said he will deliver a Budget “that moves money and power out of Westminster, and into every postcode around Britain”. That is the organising idea of 28 October, and almost no personal-finance preview covers it, because it reads as local-government policy. One part of it is not.

• Business rates: a 20% cut for pubs, social clubs and live music venues in England, confirmed 23 July 2026 and taking effect April 2027. It builds on the 15% relief announced in January 2026 for the current 2026-27 year, so the two are sequential rather than alternatives.
• Mayors keep more of what their area raises, starting with business rates — and a roadmap for income tax retention is expected at the Budget itself. That makes it one of the few things on this page with a scheduled reveal rather than open speculation.

Read “income tax retention” precisely, because this is where coverage will go wrong. Retaining a share of income tax revenue means the money raised in an area stays in that area. It is not the power to set a different income tax rate, and the two are routinely conflated. Scotland already does the second — it sets its own rates and bands — and nothing announced so far extends that to English mayors. If a roadmap on 28 October moves toward rate-setting rather than revenue-sharing, that is the moment your income tax starts depending on where you live in England, and this page will say so on the day.

The dates that matter

• 18 August 2026 — the First Time Buyer ISA consultation closed. Its outcome, and the four points it left undecided, are now Budget-day questions.
• 15 September 2026 — ONS labour market release with average weekly earnings growth for May to July, the first triple-lock input for the April 2027 State Pension rise.
• 28 September 2026 — HMRC's technical consultation on transitional rules for the minimum pension age rise closes at 11:59pm.
• 21 October 2026 — ONS CPI inflation for the year to September, the second triple-lock input.
• Wednesday 28 October 2026 — Budget statement in the Commons; HM Treasury documents and the OBR Economic and fiscal outlook published the same day.
• 5 April 2027 — end of the 2026-27 tax year. The last year in which an under-65 can pay the full £20,000 into a Cash ISA.
• 6 April 2027 — the £12,000 Cash ISA limit, the transfer restriction, the 22% ISA cash charge and the pensions inheritance-tax change all take effect together.
• 6 April 2028 — the normal minimum pension age rises from 55 to 57.
• 5 April 2031 — the current end of the income tax and inheritance-tax threshold freezes.

Sources & further reading

• GOV.UK — ISA reform 2027: anti-circumvention rules factsheet (the £12,000 limit, the 65+ carve-out, the transfer restriction, the 22% charge and the money market fund treatment).
• HM Treasury (Budget date and Budget-day documents).
• Office for Budget Responsibility (the Economic and fiscal outlook published alongside the Budget).
• GOV.UK — Income Tax rates and Personal Allowances and HMRC — maintaining the thresholds until 5 April 2031.
• GOV.UK — National Insurance rates, Tax on dividends and Capital Gains Tax rates.
• GOV.UK — Stamp Duty Land Tax residential rates.
• GOV.UK — pension annual allowance, Finance Act 2022, section 10 (minimum pension age 57 from 6 April 2028) and HMRC's transitional provisions consultation.
• DWP — benefit and pension rates 2026 to 2027 and the statutory review written statement of 26 November 2025.
• ONS — UK labour market: September 2026 and Consumer price inflation, UK: September 2026 (release calendar).
• GOV.UK — Inheritance Tax (nil-rate band, residence nil-rate band, spouse exemption).
• GOV.UK — Individual Savings Accounts (current ISA allowance and rules).

Run the numbers on your own position