Autumn Budget 2025: what changed for 2026/27

Best use of this Budget 2025 page

This is the practical, durable version of the Autumn 2025 Budget for this site. Rather than re-running the news cycle, it explains what the Budget did structurally, why a Budget dated 2025 governs your 2026/27 tax year, and exactly which calculators and guides to re-open now the working detail is published.

Budget 2026: the Chancellor, John Healey, set Wednesday 28 October 2026 as the date of the Autumn Budget in a letter to the Treasury Select Committee. Our Autumn Budget 2026 tracker labels each pre-Budget theme confirmed, expected or rumour, with sources.

What did the Autumn 2025 Budget actually change for 2026/27?

The headline that reaches almost every UK earner is continuity, not change: the personal allowance and the higher-rate threshold stay frozen rather than rising with inflation. A frozen threshold is a stealth tax rise. As pay rises with inflation, more of your income is taxed and a larger share is pulled into the higher and additional-rate bands, even though the headline rates did not move. That mechanism, fiscal drag, is the single biggest reason a 2026/27 tax bill can be higher than 2025/26 on the same real income.

The specific measures, at a glance

• Dividend tax rose 2 percentage points from 6 April 2026 — the basic rate from 8.75% to 10.75% and the higher rate from 33.75% to 35.75% (the 39.35% additional rate and the £500 allowance are unchanged). The Section 455 charge on directors’ loans follows the upper rate to 35.75%. See the dividend tax calculator.
• The threshold freeze was extended to April 2031 — the £12,570 personal allowance and the £37,700 basic rate band (so the £50,270 higher-rate threshold outside Scotland) are now frozen for three further tax years, 2028/29 to 2030/31, which is exactly what keeps fiscal drag running.
• Savings and property income rates rise 2 points from April 2027 (to 22% basic, 42% higher, 47% additional). Pre-announced, so it does not change 2026/27 bills — the savings interest calculator uses the current 2026/27 rates.
• ISA reform from April 2027 — now law in the Individual Savings Account (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2026, made on 10 September 2026 after a consultation on the draft from 25 June to 2 August 2026: the £20,000 annual allowance stays, but Cash ISA subscriptions are capped at £12,000 for savers under 65 (65-and-overs keep the full £20,000), with anti-avoidance rules: a 22% charge on interest on cash held inside investment ISAs, and no investment-ISA-to-Cash-ISA transfers for under-65s. See what changes in April 2027.
• Salary-sacrifice pensions: from 6 April 2029 only the first £2,000 a year of sacrificed pension contributions keeps its National Insurance exemption — worth knowing now if you are setting a long-term sacrifice level with the salary sacrifice calculator.
• The two-child limit was removed from 6 April 2026, so Universal Credit now includes the child element for every child. The Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Act received Royal Assent on 18 March 2026.
• Cost-of-living measures: the Budget took policy costs off energy bills from 2026, worth about £150 a year for an average household according to the Treasury, and the National Living Wage rose to £12.71 an hour from 1 April 2026.

The exact 2026/27 numbers, the allowances, bands and thresholds, live on the dedicated rate pages. That is why this page routes you to them rather than freezing a figure here that would age the moment HMRC publishes an update.

Why does a 2025 Budget set your 2026/27 tax year?

UK Budgets are named for the calendar year they are delivered, but they legislate for the tax year that follows. The Autumn 2025 Budget is the event that fixed the allowances, thresholds and rules that apply from 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027, the 2026/27 tax year. So a page labelled 2025 is not out of date here: it is the origin document for the figures the rest of this site models for 2026/27.

What to re-check after the Autumn 2025 Budget

• What changed this tax year for the plain-English impact summary of the 2026/27 figures.
• UK Budget changes tracker for the running list of confirmed measures and what each one means.
• Fiscal drag tracker if frozen thresholds are the part you actually feel month to month.
• Tax Drag Calculator to put your own salary through the 2026/27 bands.
• Dividend vs Salary Calculator if company-owner extraction is part of the post-Budget question.
• Allowable expenses for the self-employed and the sole trader tax calculator if the measures you care about are expenses, turnover or self-employed profit.

Is the 2025 Budget still relevant in 2026/27?

Yes, and arguably more so than on the day it was delivered. Its measures are not a forecast any more; they are the live rules you are taxed under for the whole of 2026/27. Until the next fiscal event changes them, the Autumn 2025 Budget is the current rulebook, and the calculators above price it in for your own numbers.

Keeping this page accurate

Budget commentary ages quickly, so the durable value here is not a newspaper recap. It is translating the fiscal event into the exact calculators and guides that need a fresh look, and pointing to the official source for the working detail. The rate and allowance pages stay the single source of truth once each measure is implemented.

Official source: Budget 2025 on GOV.UK.

Sources

Checked on 3 October 2026.

• HM Treasury and HMRC: Budget 2025 Overview of Tax Legislation and Rates: dividend rates from 6 April 2026, the freeze to 2030/31, savings and property rates from 6 April 2027, the £2,000 salary sacrifice limit from 6 April 2029 and the £12,000 cash ISA limit.
• GOV.UK: Tax on dividends (2026/27: 10.75%, 35.75%, 39.35%; £500 allowance).
• The Individual Savings Account (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2026, SI 2026/1018 (made 10 September 2026; in force 6 April 2027).
• DWP: two-child limit removal becomes law (removal from 6 April 2026).
• HM Treasury: Budget 2025 fact sheet on the cost of living (26 November 2025; about £150 off average energy bills).
• GOV.UK: National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates (£12.71 from 1 April 2026).
• HM Treasury: Chancellor's letter on the Budget 2026 date (28 October 2026).