Burnham Weighs £14bn Capital Gains Raid to Fund Allowance Rise for the Lowest Paid
The Budget’s shape leaked into Monday’s front pages: the Prime Minister is weighing a capital-gains tax increase — a 45% top rate among the proposals — to fund raising the income-tax personal allowance, worth around £600 to low earners, under a “£14bn tax raid to help the poorest” framing. It slots into his “cost of living government” promise of “breathing space” for families — and into a gilt market already pricing property-tax expansion above £1.5m.
The redistribution is the strategy stated in tax code: taking from capital gains to fund the personal allowance is the cleanest possible translation of Burnhamism into fiscal policy — visible help at the bottom, paid by the asset-owning top, with the £600 figure designed for doorsteps. The risks are behavioural and sequential: capital-gains revenue is Britain’s most forecast-resistant tax, collapsing when rates jump as disposals freeze, and every week of pre-Budget flotation gives advisers time to crystallise gains at today’s rates — the leak itself costs revenue. Stacked with the mansion-tax threshold and the dossier’s “capital and property” line, the direction is unmistakable and the bond market’s tolerance untested. Watch which proposals survive to conference — and the CGT receipts data for the pre-announcement stampede.