Healey Said to Have Decided Against Raising Capital Gains Tax
Treasury sources say the chancellor is minded not to increase capital gains tax at the Budget on 28 October, a broader position than the decision reported last week against equalising it with income tax. There is no named source and no Treasury statement. Lord O’Neill, a former adviser to the prime minister, said a rise would send “the wrong message to business”.
It is worth being precise about what this is: a briefing to a newspaper, relayed, with no minister, spokesman or denial attached. The only words the chancellor is quoted saying are from a speech last month and are not about this tax at all — that he wants “this country as a country of wealth creation” and wants policy to raise “confidence, and investment, and profit in British business”. The direction of travel is nonetheless consistent, and the politics of it are awkward for him. Wes Streeting, now defence secretary, called in May for “a wealth tax that works”; Louise Haigh, now first secretary of state, had argued for moving capital gains closer to income tax. Both were before the change of prime minister in July. Meanwhile senior banking executives have told the BBC they expect taxes on banks to rise instead, which is the revenue the chancellor appears to be substituting. Kemi Badenoch gives a pre-Budget speech today in which she is expected to press him to abandon spending plans and cut borrowing.