Dan Neidle

The employee national insurance cuts were pro-growth, as was the childcare - but all of course expensive.

The planning reform is "free" in budgetary terms.

More of that would be nice.

The biggest pro-growth change of recent years? Labour's planning reform. +0.25%

The biggest anti-growth change? Threshold freezes, 2023-2025. -0.25%

The good news - the OBR says the Budget didn't hurt growth. The bad news - the OBR says the Budget didn't improve growth:

My apologies. The next time I write something I’ll be sure to make sure nobody reads it.

I’m going to steal that line.

Something that's been under-reported:

Property tax is devolved. As of right now, there's no mansion tax happening in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland.

Probably there will be, with each creating their own tax, potentially with different bands and rates...

I'm hoping to unite Left and Right - they'll all hate my piece in today's Sunday Times, saying that successive Budgets have overtaxed the highest-earning 20%, and under-taxed both the median earner and the richest 0.1%.https://buff.ly/BqRFpJr

I've now heard from several people who left the UK because of exit tax rumours, and others who plan to leave because they think it will happen next time.

The exit tax leaks were really unfortunate. It would be a very good idea for Ms Reeves to clearly rule out any future exit tax.

Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/59X8JGD...

Apple podcast link: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Discussed the Budget yesterday on the FT's Money Clinic podcast, with Claer Barrett, Stuart Kirk and Tej Parikh...

unfortunately no, I'm not sure! In fact it absolutely will do that, and there's no easy solution...

see the methodology in the article.

that's correct - the chart makes council tax look much more rational than it is...

Mansion tax is just England!

For more distracting tax infographics, you can follow me here, or subscribe at taxpolicy.org.uk

More details about the methodology in the article linked above, which includes a link to the code (all open source, as with everything we do).

The methodology here was a very simple one: just analysing land registry transactions and uprating by local house price inflation. This misses a lot of stuff - improvements, properties that haven't been sold, properties where price wasn't on the register...

So my view is that the tax is good policy. There will be inefficiencies and unfairnesses, as with all taxes, but the basic concept is a good one. I wrote more about that in our Budget round-up: taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/11/26/t...

But still IMO right to end the anomaly that someone in a £10m home pays only twice the council tax of someone in a £400k home.

The map shows quite how unequal property wealth has become. Great for people who own property. Not so great for those who want to.

Tax can help with this. The mansion tax in a very small way.

And you can look at the distribution of council tax bands. Why does this look so equal? Because the bands are based on 1991 valuations...

You can also switch to constituency view (top left control), with estimated £ per constituency.

£7,000 in North Durham. £55m in Kensington & Bayswater.

Important note: the app doesn't identify individual properties. The markers are on the centre of postcodes.

(Lots of places on the web do let you lookup the value of individual properties; but not something we want to do).

You can move around the map, click on postcodes, and see our estimated count of mansion-tax-paying-properties at that postcode, together with stats for that constituency, and how it compares to others.

You'll be extremely unsurprised to see that the vast majority of the tax comes from London/Southeast

Shoutout to Poole - the only exception actually visible on this chart (the interactive version on the website reveals all the details when you touch/move the mouse over)

The map: taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/11/27/m...

More info and instructions below.

We’ve mapped the mansion tax.

You can see who's paying - which constituency, which postcode - and how many "mansions" are near you.

Full interactive map here 👇

We'll be publishing a webapp tomorrow that lets you see the impact of the tax across the map of the UK.

For updates, follow me here, or subscribe at the Tax Policy Associates website.

So two-and-a-half cheers for the council tax surcharge.

More in our Budget update - see the post pinned to my profile.

We absolutely should have a proper percentage-based property tax, but that has to be part of wholesale reform, meaning abolishing stamp duty. Having both would be inequitable, do damage to an already very troubled property market, and end up hurting everyone.