The Chancellor's Budget - November 2025

UK BUDGET STATEMENT

Autumn 2025

notes and comments

Abell Limited

Government Budget Statement

November 2025

prepared by:-

ABELL LIMITED , with a little help from our many  friends.

Officially……

“ Strong foundations, secure future: a Budget that delivers on the country's priorities ”

– says Ms. R Reeves

Or …..

The current ‘pc’ mantra is still to abuse the previous shower in every breath despite them receiving a p45 in July 2024, and to keep puffing a smokescreen to hide the new lot massively increasing taxes each Budget Day to pay for all the great stuff we want (maybe) – Higher wages for State workers, NHS fixes, Defence ramp-up, Railways everywhere, Potholes abolished etc.

We set out below comments on the latest Budget of 2025 presented by our Chancellor on 26th November 2025.

The ongoing borrowing problems hanging over the whole statement is yet again to be fixed by an economy growing in overall size, and therefore reducing all the % numbers – but we normally achieve 1-2% pa anyway (despite politicians fiddling).

Apparently it’s not previously occurred to governments that growing the economy at a faster rate than 1-2% will help increase the tax-take automatically.

The Labour Party keeps repeating this is our route to the promised land of balance budgets and happy voters, but they haven’t at all explained how they are going to achieve this via jacking up the Minimum Wage, increasing Benefits and Government Spending on the NHS/Defence etc. - basically it’s going to be by wishful thinking, as the OBR analysis confirms.

And the commentators all droning with Tables about personal tax increases are mixing things up. Personal income tax thresholds were not changed in the Budget - but due to inflation, a salary of £100k expressed in real terms each year will pay a bit more tax/NIC when calculated in real values, but not in cash terms. So it’s all smoke and mirrors really.

This budget increases taxes by around £25-26 billion.

It is partly due to paying for £10 billion of ‘automatic’ extra welfare spending – pensions, sickness etc., including £3 billion just on abolishing the two-child cap calculated within benefits. The Chancellor said this would “lift children out of poverty”, not sure quite how, as it’s the parents that get the cash, and Wetherspoons the benefit?!

Budget news

ü    RATES

A new surcharge is coming on homes “worth more than £2m” – not sure how this will work in reality, as the last valuation list for homes is dated 1991. Starts in 28/29.

ü    LANDLORDS (boo hiss)

A new 2% income tax surcharge is coming to “even things up vs. the workers”

Apparently this will also apply to Dividends for 26/27 and Interest income for 27/28.

ü    SALARY SACRIFICE restrictions

From April 2029, the government will charge employee and employer National Insurance on any pension contributions made via salary sacrifice above £2,000 a year

ü    NATIONAL INSURANCE

No direct changes – phew!

ü    BUSINESS DISPOSALS

The capital gains tax relief for bosses selling their businesses to Employee Ownership Trusts is halved from 100% to 50% to retain (destroy) an incentive for employee ownership while ensuring business owners get milked. 

ü    SCALEXTRIX

There is a new per mile levy for electric and plug-in hybrid cars, coming in 2028. No idea how this will work, but reflects the fact that all vehicles wear out roads, electric cars more than petrol ones esp.

ü    CARS on MOTABILITY

The possibility of buying a Porsche through this scheme if you are disabled has been stopped.

ü    GAMBLING

There are large tax increases on online gambling, but no changes to in-person and horse race wagering.

ü    FUEL DUTY

no change until at least August 2026

INHERITANCE TAX

×       The basic £325,000 limit stays, and the inherited main property relief also.

Agricultural/Business property relief? – she’s not listened to 45,965,235 comments so the new rules go ahead in 2026.

×       As Rachel would say “can’t see where the problem is”.

ü    PERSONAL ALLOWANCES & INCOME TAX BANDS

ü    The freeze continues for the foreseeable future (i.e. until just before the next election).

ü    VAT

ü    No changes

ü    MINIMUM WAGE

ü    Up by 4% to £12.71 and hour, the hospitality industry is sooooo pleased.

ü    PENSIONS

ü    The (bonkers) triple lock stays, so us pensioners keep get chunky pay rises. Slightly ameliorated as part of the basic pension now exceeds the personal allowance so the government gets 20% of all increases back in tax.

ü    Fags going up by RPI+2%.   – absolutely bonkers when you’re short of dough. Try 5%, it won’t make any difference to consumption, as the customers are addicts.

ü    VAPE Duty still coming ………….Oct 26

×       ALCOHOL

Going up by RPI 1^st Feb. 26 – apparently this is to “help” the industry!

ü    ISAs

The limit drops from £20,000 pa to £12k from April 27. UNLESS you're over 65, so for the grey vote there’s no change. However the other £8k can still be used, via investing in stocks and shares, so your inbox will be flooded with schemes nearer the date.

×       CORPORATION TAX

Capital allowance writing down allowance DECREASED from 18% to 14%, but at least the 100% FYA stays for most stuff.

ü    PRIVATE JETS

Even the Abell jet is now snagged into paying APD.

×       BUSINESS RATES

×       Frig to help smaller businesses by caning larger ones

×       Still no direct attack on the online warehouses littering our green and pleasant land.

×       WORKING FROM HOME

The small allowance HMRC was grudgingly forced to grant to PAYE employees when we were enmeshed in lockdown, is withdrawn from April 26. 

ü    TAX / BENEFITS FRAUD

ü    The government has seen the ‘easy’ target of targeting fraud / evasion as a way of getting in free money to fund their plans – let’s see how that goes.

ü    HMRC is going to recruit thousands of extra staff to focus on this area. Presumably the previous shower (and HMRC) were happy for all of us to regard paying taxes as optional?

ü    Closing the tax-gap is now important. Commendable but it’s never varied much for donkey’s years, so it’s not going to change in future unless the government adopts a wholesale renewal/rebuilding of their powers and tech (led by a leading chartered accountant with expertise in this area-we know one). It’s about 5% of gdp, and if it was eliminated (no cash-only builders) it might raise £40bn a year,  it’s not going to happen.

ü    If you’re a ‘loafer’, apparently they’re going to ask you more searching questions before handing out £loads in Benefits to ‘persuade’ you to get off your sofa and work. Possibly even giving you slimming drugs to help you get your weight off, and make you fit to work.

ü    Remember most of what she waffled about ONLY applies to England. The subsidiaries just get a further massive cheque to spend on what they fancy.

BAD NEWS

×       The official government summary of this lot of changes is “stick it on tick mostly”, instead of funding the increased spending through taxation. And of course there’s a frig to the government borrowing tape measure to make it shorter/longer so that less borrowing counts as borrowing in future.

×       If we’re lucky growth might amble along at 1.5% for the predicted future, which won’t fix things any time soon.

×       No ‘Amazon’ tax being introduced yet to level up online vs. terrestrial base costs. This is a terrible omission – it really is not hard to fix this running sore, and get another £1bn+ a year in of tax for free, without harming anyone that we care a fig about.

×       No targets set for Civil Servants to do a vaguely decent days work, DVLA/Passport Office to attend to their post, or HMRC to answer the phone the same day you call them etc.

×       And of course no instant fix to the appalling Post Office scandal – see years of Private Eye ™ articles. All they have to do is send a cheque for £100k to each person next week, while the civil swervants take their time working out the final numbers.

×       Despite the fact that we’re at war, no mention of this. Seems the Armed Forces are so well funded they can fight a major war out of their own stocks of guns/ammo.

×       No mention of legislating to make Pension Funds invest in UK companies, instead of on overseas markets. Their investments mostly go overseas which is a scandal.

×       TAX-FREE SHOPPING not to be reviewed to see if restoring some of it will bring in more tax than we refund to all the Gucci-buyers in Knightsbridge

HM Treasury Document Executive Summary

Thanks UK Treasury©  , for the data 

 Download pdf of this briefing

budget251126a summ.pdf

Download PDF • 93KB

.

HM Treasury Document Executive Summary -

HMG Budget_2025.pdf

Download PDF • 4.15MB

but beware, it's looong.

Thanks UK Treasury©  and FSB particularly, for the data 

-end-

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