Wednesday 28 October is the date of John Healey's first Budget as Chancellor, and with 25 days to go the Treasury has said very little about what it contains. St James's Place noted on 30 September that leaks have been few and far between, and that the only measure confirmed so far is help for first-time buyers. That silence suits the speculation trade, which is why so many headlines this month promise a tax raid on something. Yet much of what will change your tax bill in 2027 was settled last November and is either in force, already legislated, or sitting before Parliament. Rumour and schedule are easy to confuse when both arrive as the same kind of headline, so the two are separated below, with GOV.UK behind every scheduled change and a named newspaper behind every rumour.
What is already in force or scheduled, whoever gives the speech
Start with the change that has already happened. Since 6 April 2026 the ordinary and upper dividend rates have been 10.75% and 35.75%, each two percentage points higher, while the additional rate stays at 39.35% and the dividend allowance remains £500. Director-shareholders have been paying those rates since the spring. The next step arrives in April 2027, when the same two-point rise reaches savings income and rental profit gets a set of rates of its own.
- 6 April 2027, savings and property income. Savings rates become 22%, 42% and 47%, and separate property rates take the same three figures for rental profit in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
- 6 April 2027, cash ISAs. The cash ISA limit for under-65s falls to £12,000 inside an unchanged £20,000 overall allowance, and the regulations were laid before Parliament on 14 September. They also add a flat-rate charge on interest paid on cash held inside stocks and shares ISAs.
- From the same date, most unused pension funds and death benefits come into the estate for Inheritance Tax, a change HMRC's technical note says was legislated in Finance Act 2026.
- 6 April 2027, Making Tax Digital. Sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £30,000 join, and points-based penalties start for missed quarterly updates, with a £200 charge at four points. The threshold drops to £20,000 in April 2028.
- Further out sit the £2,000 National Insurance cap on salary sacrifice pension contributions from April 2029 and, per Moneyfacts, the council tax surcharge in England on homes worth £2 million or more from April 2028, among others.
The arithmetic for landlords is the easiest to show. A basic-rate taxpayer in England, Wales or Northern Ireland with £10,000 of taxable rental profit, all of it inside the basic-rate band, pays £2,000 in 2026/27 and £2,200 in 2027/28 once the 22% property rate applies. A higher-rate landlord with £15,000 of profit goes from £6,000 to £6,300 at 42%. GOV.UK also says reliefs and allowances will be set against other income first and reach property, savings and dividend income only afterwards, so someone with both a salary and rental profit will find the Personal Allowance applied to the salary before the rent sees any of it. Savers feel the change more slowly, because the Personal Savings Allowance of £1,000 for basic-rate taxpayers and £500 for higher-rate taxpayers still shelters the first slice of interest. Frozen thresholds do the rest of the work: the Income Tax bands stay where they are through 2030/31, so an ordinary pay rise is more likely to carry someone over the 40% line, and when that happens the savings allowance halves.
The rumour list, with the newspaper attached
Prime Minister Andy Burnham says he will keep Labour's 2024 pledge not to raise the rates of Income Tax, National Insurance or VAT, but he has also said he “won't be unrealistic” about the state of the public finances. SJP reports that the buffer against the fiscal rules, about £24 billion when Healey took the job, has been eaten into by higher borrowing costs, rising inflation and the conflict in the Middle East. Those two facts explain why reporters are looking at everything except the headline rates, and the list below is what they have found. None of it has been confirmed by the Treasury.
- Capital Gains Tax is the favourite. The current rates are 18% for basic-rate taxpayers and 24% above that, and TaxAssist Accountants, summarising Telegraph reporting, says ministers are weighing a rate as high as 45% to help pay for a Personal Allowance of £15,570 instead of £12,570.
- First Secretary of State Louise Haigh has argued for ending the uplift on death, which Which? says could raise between £1.5bn and £2bn a year.
- Moneyfacts reports that the Chancellor is weighing whether to tax holiday lets as second homes rather than businesses, and the chairman of the Professional Association of Self-Caterers told the Telegraph this could cost a typical owner £1,000 to £3,000 a year.
- The Daily Mail has reported that the 20% charge on agricultural and business property above £2.5 million could be scrapped or the threshold lifted to £5 million.
- The Times has reported that the £2 million threshold for the high-value council tax surcharge could fall to £1.5 million, and the Telegraph that the Small Business Rate Relief threshold could rise from £12,000 to £17,096.
The Personal Allowance deserves its own line, because Burnham has said the frozen £12,570 was the complaint he heard most on the doorstep in the Makerfield by-election and that it would be looked at, while conceding a change would be “difficult”. There is a quieter reason it matters. At £241.30 a week for 2026/27, the full new State Pension comes to £12,547.60 over 52 weeks, just under the allowance, and Moneyfacts expects a 3.9% rise that would take it above £13,000. Reports suggest Healey will explain in the Budget how pensioners with no other income will avoid tax on it. Burnham has separately said the triple lock will give way from 2030 to a double lock, the higher of inflation or 2.5%, but that was a party conference announcement, not a Budget measure.
Dates the Budget cannot move
Whatever is announced on 28 October, the Self Assessment calendar for 2025/26 stays as GOV.UK prints it. New filers must tell HMRC by Monday 5 October; anyone registering later is given a different filing deadline three months from HMRC's letter, but the tax is still due on 31 January. Paper returns must reach HMRC by 11:59pm on 31 October, a Saturday this year, and online returns and payment are due by 31 January 2027, with 30 December 2026 as the last day to have a bill collected through a tax code. For Making Tax Digital, HMRC said in August that more than 436,000 sole traders and landlords had sent a first quarterly update and that it would begin signing up those who had not from September. Anyone whose qualifying income for 2025/26 was above £30,000 is in scope from 6 April 2027.
Why waiting beats guessing
Many pre-Budget rumours never turn into measures, as St James's Place pointed out in its own preview on 30 September.
Hargreaves Lansdown gives last year as the example: talk that the tax-free cash from pensions would be cut led some savers to take it early, the cut never came, and part of their pension ended up outside a tax-efficient wrapper. Leave pension tax-free cash alone until the Budget documents are published. The same goes for gifting, selling a property or restructuring a company on the strength of one newspaper's source; the Treasury publishes its policy papers on the day, and the dates in them are the ones that count.
The one deadline that is already fixed is the cash ISA. Until 5 April 2027 an under-65 can still put the full £20,000 into cash, and from 6 April the cap is £12,000, so anyone who wants that much in cash should use the 2026/27 allowance rather than wait. The catch is that the wrapper only earns its keep if the interest would otherwise be taxed. A basic-rate taxpayer whose interest stays inside the £1,000 Personal Savings Allowance pays nothing on it outside an ISA, so for them the rule change costs very little.
Healey is expected to stand up shortly after Prime Minister's Questions, at around 12:30pm on 28 October, with the Office for Budget Responsibility's forecast published alongside. The rates for 2027/28 quoted above are already on GOV.UK, and they are the ones to check your own figures against. This article is general information, not personal tax advice.