LONDON (Reuters) -British finance minister Rachel Reeves is considering raising income tax in next month’s budget to help reduce a multibillion-pound deficit, The Guardian reported on Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n
The discussions come as Reeves faces an estimated shortfall of more than 30 billion pounds ($40.26 billion), the newspaper reported. It said Reeves is in active talks over whether to break one of Labour’s key manifesto pledges, which include not to raise income tax.<\/p>\n
The Guardian said officials were weighing options including an increase in the basic rate of income tax or changes to thresholds, though no final decision has been made.<\/p>\n
A Treasury spokesperson did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.<\/p>\n
Reeves wants to balance day-to-day spending with tax revenues by the end of the decade. The current budget deficit stood at 71.8 billion pounds in the April\u2013September period, up 17% year-on-year.<\/p>\n
She has also signalled a desire for a larger fiscal buffer than the 9.9 billion pounds previously outlined, which has been eroded by downgraded economic forecasts and higher borrowing costs.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Reeves said she was looking at tax and spending measures for next month’s budget on November 26.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.7451 pounds)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti, Editing by Franklin Paul)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (Reuters) -British finance minister Rachel Reeves is considering raising income tax in next month’s budget to help…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,22664,1144,619,712,42656,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-522951","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-income-tax","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-rachel-reeves","15":"tag-scotland","16":"tag-the-guardian","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115425234474835713","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}