Spring Budget’s winners & losers revealed – how plans affect you and your money

PARENTS, workers and drinkers are among the winners in today’s Spring Budget – with smokers hit.

The Chancellor has revealed a whole host of financial changes and updates affecting Brits in his speech in the Commons today.

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In his second Spring Budget since becoming Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt set out the government’s financial plan for the year including payments, tax changes and policy updates.

There were also a host of updates such as the triple lock being maintained and benefits being uprated to match inflation, which were first announced in the Autumn Statement.

But, today Mr Hunt has unveiled further support for households, including tax cuts and a further freeze on fuel duty.

Some people will be happy while others may feel they have missed out.

Below we round up the winners and losers from the Budget.

Winners

Drinkers

Drinkers will be raising a glass to Jeremy Hunt after he announced a further freeze on alcohol taxes until February 2025.

The Chancellor opted to hold booze duties at their current rate rather than increase them with inflation.

Alcohol duty typically goes up in line with inflation each year, but last year it was frozen until August 2024.

The announcement marks a major win for The Sun’s Save Our Sups campaign to help both bosses and punters.

Parents

In his giveaway Spring Budget, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt outlined reforms to child benefit in a major boost for parents.

From April the high-income child benefit charge threshold will be rising from £50,000 to £60,000.

As it stands, when parents or carers start earning over £50,000, they have to start paying the high-income child benefit charge.

This means you have to pay back 1% of your child benefit for every £100 of income earned over the £50,000 threshold.

But in April this will be upped to £60,000 instead.

Currently, when you reach a £60,000 salary, you have to repay the full amount of child benefit received.

From April, though, The Chancellor announced this cap will go up to £80,000 to ensure fewer parents are caught out.

It means parents will pay back 1% for every £200 earned, instead of every £100.

This will lead to hundreds of thousands of parents will save an average of £1,260 next year.

Workers

More than 27million workers are in line for a £450 wage boost thanks to a fresh National Insurance cut.

The 2p reduction has been confirmed by The Chancellor in today’s Spring Budget and will come into effect in just weeks.

The change means that someone earning an average salary of £35,000 will save more than £448.60 a year.

This increases to a maximum of around £750 for those on salaries above £50,000.

The legislation is being brought in next week to enable the cut to come in from April 6 – the start of the next tax year.

Two million self-employed people will see the main rate of National Insurance slashed from 8% to 6%, working out at an average saving of £350 a year.

Well-off savers

The government has announced the introduction of a new British ISA to encourage investment in UK companies and boost the City.

It will give people an additional £5,000 tax-free allowance to invest in UK assets, on top of the existing £20,000 limit.

There are currently four types of Individual Savings Accounts (ISA): Cash ISA, stocks and shares ISA, innovative finance ISA and Lifetime ISA.

Every tax year you can put money into one of each kind of ISA – the tax year runs from April 6 to April 5.

You can save up to £20,000 in one type of account or split the allowance across some or all of the other types.

Hard-up households

Millions of hard-up households will get extra help from the extension of a huge free cash fund later this year.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has extended the Household Support Fund (HSF) for the fifth time – adding a further £500million to the pot.

Funding for the fourth round of the HSF was due to dry up for good on March 31.

However, the new support will now extend the HSF scheme for another six months.

Drivers

Fuel duty has been frozen for a 14th historic year in a massive win for drivers and The Sun’s Keep It Down campaign.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt used today’s Budget to stop petrol prices rising with inflation, while also extending the temporary 5p cut.

Hailing The Sun’s campaign in his Budget speech, Mr Hunt said the move will save motorists an average of £50 next year.

Benefits claimants

Millions of households on benefits, including Universal Credit, will get a payment boost worth up to £470 from next month.

The Government confirmed in its Spring Budget documents today the benefits will be uprated by 6.7%, the CPI measure of inflation from September last year.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt first revealed that payments will be going up in line with inflation in his Autumn Statement last November.

Pensioners

Pensioners are also set for a bumper rise of up to £901 to their state pension payments.

The government confirmed in its Spring Budget documents today that rates will increase by 8.5% as the triple lock remains in place.

The state pension rate is going up in April.

Losers

Smokers

The cost of a packet of cigarettes will top £16 after today’s Budget.

The Treasury imposed a dramatic increase in tobacco duty to ensure a tax on vapes keeps smoking alternatives cheaper.

Last year Jeremy Hunt added £1.55 to a pack of 20 cigarettes.

The average cost of a 20-pack is currently £14.39 – making Britain one of the most expensive places to smoke in Europe.

But now prices are set to rise to an eye-watering £16 following a one-off increase of £2 per 100 cigarettes or 50 grams of tobacco.

This change is not set to come in until October 2026.

Vapers

Vape prices are set to rise after Jeremy Hunt whacked a new tax on e-cigs in today’s Spring Budget.

The tax will be imposed on imported e-cigs and manufacturers to make them unaffordable for kids.

It comes after a ban on disposable vapes was announced earlier this year as part of a clampdown.

The duty will apply to the liquid in vapes, with higher levels for products with more nicotine.

Again, this will not come into force until October 2026.

Second-home owners

The Chancellor has abolished multiple dwellings relief for stamp duty land tax (SDLT).

Among a raft of property tax reforms, Jeremy Hunt said stamp duty relief for people who purchase more than one dwelling in a single transaction was intended to support investment in the private rental sector.

However, an external evaluation found “no strong evidence that it had done so and that it was being regularly abused” and as a result, the Chancellor announced that he would abolish the relief.

Stamp duty land tax is a lump sum payment anyone buying a property or piece of land over a certain price has to pay.

Non-doms

The special tax status for non-domiciled individuals in the UK, which allows them to pay tax on only their UK earnings, will be abolished.

It’ll be replaced with a simpler system from April 2025, which Mr Hunt said would be more generous for the first four years, with non-doms having to pay more tax after that point.

This is expected to raise £2.7billion a year in taxes and will be used to help cut taxes for households.

Non-dom status is given to UK residents who declare their permanent home – or domicile – is in another country.

Individuals with non-domicile status do not have to pay UK tax on income from foreign investments.

Business class passengers

Mr Hunt announced higher rates of air passenger duty on business class tickets.

Jeremy Hunt said he would make a “one-off adjustment” to rates of Air Passenger Duty (APD) on “non-economy flights, only to account for high inflation in recent years”.

APD is levied by airlines on passengers who start their journeys at UK airports – it raises around £3.8billion per year.

First-time buyers

Opportunities to do more to help first-time buyers were missed in the Budget.

Previous reports had suggested that a 99% mortgage scheme to help people take their first step on the property ladder was being considered.

There had also been calls to overhaul Lifetime Isas (LISAs) too.

Consumer champion Martin Lewis is among those who had been urging Mr Hunt to overhaul “unfair” aspects of the savings accounts.

LISAs are often used by first-time buyers to get on the property ladder.

But the home must cost less than £450,000 – a threshold that has remained the same since the saving scheme was first launched in 2017 despite rising house prices.

The MoneySavingExpert.com (MSE) founder previously branded the accounts a “dead duck” product, as buying a property over this amount leaves savers paying a penalty.

Inheriting households

The rate at which families start paying inheritance tax (IHT) has been frozen since 2009, and it was previously extended by two years until April 2028.

This will force more and more households to pay the tax as house prices and inflation continue to increase.

Any plans to cut the thresholds appear to have been shelved until possibly the autumn statement.

It’s worth bearing in mind inheritance tax is due on only around 4% of estates.

Analysis from The Sun’s Political Editor Harry Cole

SO Jeremy Hunt has fired the starting gun on the election campaign with a highly political Budget.

There was lots of shouting, but with the cupboard bare, not as many giveaways as a Chancellor would have liked on the eve of battle.

As he delivered what will likely be the last Budget before Britain goes to the polls this autumn, the glum faces behind him would suggest Tory MPs did not think it would be enough to turn around the Conservatives bleak numbers.

Even with some tax cuts, the problem the Government has is the tax burden still remains at the highest level since 1947.

And nobody really thinks that will be going down rather than up under Labour.

On top of that, the cold hard numbers are hard to spin.

The small print of the Budget shows an extra £186.6 billion in stealth taxes over the next five years: more than double what the combined £105.4 billion savings from the combined tax cuts last November and today.

Also painful is the OBR’s prediction that net migration is going to stay at around 300,000 indefinitely and Tory tax changes have actually made Britain’s workshy issues worse.

With more people being dragged into higher tax bands, it turns out fewer people are bothering to work harder.

But the shape of the Tory manifesto is coming into sight, with the abolition of National Insurance clearly going to feature as a flagship election issue.

The dual taxation of wages through NICS and Income Tax has been a long running quirk of our complex tax system, but abolishing it completely would be eye-wateringly expensive.

That said, Hunt has reduced it by 4p, down to 8p in the pound on earnings in just six months, hence why he is dangling the prospect of phasing it out completely over the five years.

But given there are huge bills coming down the path for national security, massive compensation payouts, and sustainable public spending, is that loss of Treasury revenue really credible?

I suspect we will spend a large part of the election campaign arguing about that.

Hunt peppered his hour-long speech with attacks on the opposition parties, and countless name checks – and real cheques – for key marginal seats the Government hope to save at the election.

Given how many times he mentioned his own seat in Surrey and the vicious pop at the Liberal Democrats who could oust him, its clear the Chancellor is as worried about his own seat as he is about anyone else’s.

It was the tetchiest Budget I can remember, with countless interventions from the Deputy Speaker needed after Labour heckled their way through the measures.

If this is the shape of the election campaign to come, it’s going to be a very long year…

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