Could Reeves break a 50-year taboo by raising income tax in her Budget?

"It has been called the 50-year tax taboo. It is more than half a century since a chancellor of the exchequer chose to put up the basic rate of income tax. The chancellor in question was Labour's Denis Healey and the Budget was delivered on 15 April 1975. Not once since have any of his successors done the same thing."

"Why? You can pick your expression of choice: softening up, expectation management, pitch-rolling. They all translate as preparing us for unpopular choices to come. Reeves volunteering to commandeer the broadcasting apparatus of Downing Street the specially built news conference room in No 9 tells you everything about the scale of what she is toying with at the end of the month."

"One senior figure said to me, think of the news conference as being like the first five pages of the chancellor's speech on Budget Day, in which she sketches out the economic landscape as she sees it before she announces what she is going to do."

No chancellor has increased the basic rate of income tax since Labour's Denis Healey raised it in April 1975. Three weeks before the Budget, Rachel Reeves used a Downing Street news conference to set out the economic rationale that could justify tax rises. The appearance aims to soften public resistance, manage expectations and prepare voters for unpopular fiscal choices. The detailed decisions about which taxes will rise and by how much will be announced on Budget Day. The Treasury presented the address as the case for forthcoming measures and signalled scrutiny of Labour's manifesto commitments in the run-up to the Budget.

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