With the Autumn Budget set for 28 October, Grant Thornton’s preview lists what is ruled in, what is ruled out and what nobody will confirm
Budget Week in London: Business Rates, Pubs and a Fiscal Headroom That Has Halved
With the Autumn Budget set for 28 October, Grant Thornton’s preview lists what is ruled in, what is ruled out and what nobody will confirm
By Chelsea Bloom, business and politics correspondent, North London
The Date and the Gap
The Autumn Budget is set for 28 October 2026, according to the Grant Thornton preview of the tax changes to watch. The Prime Minister, it says, chose the earlier date to shorten the period of uncertainty. Fiscal headroom, the buffer between the government’s plans and its own rules, was around 24 billion pounds at Spring Forecast 2026. Recent estimates put it at about 12 billion pounds, roughly half the Office for Budget Responsibility’s March forecast. The Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests it could plausibly be as high as 20 billion pounds, but with very high uncertainty.
That range, from 12 to 20, is the whole drama of the week. A Chancellor with 12 billion pounds of room acts differently from one with 20.
Ruled Out
Grant Thornton says income tax rates, employee National Insurance and VAT are ruled out. Together they account for almost 60 percent of total tax receipts, which is what makes the rest of the menu so awkward. Resuming inflation-linked uprating of income tax thresholds from April 2027 would cost around 8.4 billion pounds a year, according to the IFS, so the Chancellor cannot be generous there either.
Reports say equalising capital gains tax with income tax has been ruled out, and The Times reports no CGT increase, though neither is officially confirmed. On property, the preview says a Land Value Tax looks unlikely this Budget, and the Financial Times reports that lowering the High Value Council Tax Surcharge threshold from 2 million to 1.5 million pounds has been ruled out. The surcharge is due from April 2028.
What Business Is Watching
For business, the first item is rates. Changes to Small Business Rates Relief are expected, and reports suggest online marketplaces could be made responsible for VAT on goods sold by UK businesses. Sector levies are on the watch list, including the bank surcharge and industry-specific levies such as one on gambling. The curtailment of agricultural property relief for inheritance tax may be revisited, and it is unclear whether business property relief is also affected. The government is aiming to raise an extra 10 billion pounds a year by 2029-30 from closing the tax gap.
On corporation tax, Labour has pledged to keep the headline rate at 25 percent for this Parliament and to retain full expensing and the annual investment allowance. Consultations cover withholding tax on cross-border interest, the distributions framework, which affects buybacks, exits and demergers, and the treatment of predevelopment costs following the Supreme Court’s Orsted judgment.
The Pub Question
For a column about London business, nothing matters more than the pub. Grant Thornton notes that a 20 percent cut in business rates for pubs, social clubs and live music venues in England takes effect in April 2027, following 15 percent relief in 2026-27. Hotels, restaurants, cafes and cinemas are excluded. The Chancellor called the business rates cut a downpayment, the preview says, and committed to a buffer against uncertainty, which it reads as pointing to further steps to rebuild fiscal headroom.
A downpayment on what, nobody has said. In my part of London, every pub landlord I know has the same question, which is whether the relief will arrive before the next quarter’s bill.
Reading It Honestly
A preview is a list of rumours with a letterhead. Grant Thornton marks several items as reported and unconfirmed, and I have done the same. The Budget will contain surprises, and the Chancellor has every reason not to read this column.
What a preview can do is tell us the shape of the choice. Income tax, National Insurance and VAT are off the table. That leaves property, gains, sector levies and the tax gap, and these are the places where a London business should expect to hear something on Tuesday week.
What I Would Do This Week
If you run a small firm, read your own rates bill and ask your accountant what Small Business Rates Relief would mean for you. If you sell through a marketplace, find out who currently accounts for the VAT. If you have a pension in an investment property, look at the capital gains headlines with care.
And if you are a pub landlord, carry on pulling pints. The rest is paper.
Property Nerves, Seen From Elsewhere
Fear of a market travels fast. The same jitters turn up in the comic dispatches on the Cebu condominium story: a Manila News report on a Mactan broker with three brochures, a London Prat account of the references demanded of British retirees (direct link: https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/) and a Bohiney piece on two-hour open houses. Read them for the human detail a market report leaves out. The wider network is at prat.uk and bohiney.com.
Note: Philippine authorities are examining unproven allegations about Thomas Markle Sr., who lived in Cebu until earlier this year, as GMA News and the Guardian have reported. No charges have been filed. Child protection is a serious matter; the jokes here are about a property market.
For the lighter side of the news, there is always NewsThump.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/cebu-realtor-cant-sell-beachfront-listings/