Reform UK will increase the tax-free personal allowance to £15,000 if Nigel Farage wins the next general election. Robert Jenrick will pledge to bring in the change in the first 100 days of becoming chancellor in his speech at the party's conference today.
The tax-free amount has been frozen at £12,570 since 2021 in a major stealth tax and is due to stay at that level until 2031. Mr Jenrick will tell the gathering in Birmingham: "As chancellor, I will wake each morning with one purpose. To make Britain a better place to be a worker than it was the day before."
Impact on workers and pensioners
He is expected to add: "1.3 million were dragged into paying tax last year alone. Why? Because the tax-free allowance has been stuck at 12 and a half grand since 2021. And Labour has frozen it until 2031.
"That betrayal costs a full-time worker on the minimum wage more than £750 a year. And now for the first time, the freeze means they're going to be taxing the state pension. What a disgrace."
Long-term aim and government response
In its manifesto before the 2024 general election, Reform pledged to lift the personal allowance to £20,000. Mr Jenrick will insist that this remains a long-term aim.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham raised hopes that he could unfreeze the personal allowance shortly after entering 10 Downing Street in July. He said the issue was "lodged in my mind" after hearing it on the campaign trail during the Makerfield by-election. But Mr Burnham later said there was no immediate commitment to increase the tax-free amount but that it would be looked at in the Budget.
The PM said: "Well, it's funny these days you can't answer a question honestly without then people reading everything else into it."
He added: "I want to answer questions honestly in this job, as I said before. I think that's all about trust in politics and doing politics differently, and I'm determined to keep working in that way. It was raised a lot, but I then went on to say, 'But we'll have to look at it at the Budget alongside everything else'. So no commitment, no unfunded promise. It's just perhaps the way politics is these days and the way people report things, but that was an honest answer. There is no commitment at this point to change, but we will look at that at the Budget."
