April 6th came and went, and with it another round of tax changes that nobody voted for and nobody asked for. The personal allowance — the amount you can earn before the government takes its cut — remains stuck at £12,570. It's been there since 2021. Six years. Six years of wages rising while the threshold stays put, dragging millions of ordinary workers into higher tax brackets they were never meant to be in. This is the biggest stealth tax in modern British history, and Labour is perfectly happy to keep it going.

The Freeze That Keeps on Taking

Let's talk numbers, because the government would rather you didn't. When the personal allowance was frozen in 2021, inflation was around 2%. Since then we've had the worst cost of living crisis in a generation. Wages have risen — not enough, but they've risen. And every pound of that increase above £12,570 has been taxed at rates that were designed for higher earners.

The Resolution Foundation has laid it bare: even though the government hasn't technically increased any income tax rates in 2026-27, households will still be paying more tax than they were the year before. That's what fiscal drag does. It's a tax rise that doesn't need a vote, doesn't need a budget announcement, and doesn't need a manifesto commitment. It just happens, silently, while politicians pretend they haven't raised taxes.

This freeze is set to continue until at least 2028. By then, millions of workers on perfectly ordinary wages will have been pulled into the higher rate band. People who work in shops, drive lorries, and staff our hospitals — paying tax at rates that were meant for the well-off. It's fundamentally dishonest governance.

300,000 Workers Lose Home Working Relief

As if the frozen allowance wasn't enough, HMRC has now scrapped the home working tax relief for around 300,000 people. If you've been working from home — as many people still do, especially since Covid changed working patterns permanently — you used to be able to claim tax relief on £6 a week. It wasn't much. For a basic rate taxpayer, it worked out at about £62 a year. For higher rate taxpayers, £124.

Small numbers, perhaps. But here's the principle that matters: the government told people to work from home, businesses adapted, workers adapted, and now the government is clawing back the modest tax relief that recognised those extra costs. Your heating bill doesn't care whether you're at home because you choose to be or because your employer requires it. The electricity you use for your laptop and your Zoom calls costs the same either way.

HMRC says scrapping this relief will save £115 million over five years. That's £23 million a year. In the context of a government that spends over a trillion pounds annually, this is pocket change. But it's pocket change taken directly from working people who were already feeling the squeeze.

The National Living Wage Rise Doesn't Fix This

The government will point to the National Living Wage increase — up 4.1% to £12.71 an hour — as proof they're on the side of workers. And yes, a pay rise is welcome. But let's be honest about what's actually happening here. The minimum wage goes up, which pushes more of those earnings above the frozen personal allowance, which means more tax is collected on wages that were only just increased.

It's a cycle that benefits the Treasury and leaves workers running to stand still. You earn a bit more, you pay a lot more in tax, and your actual spending power barely shifts. Meanwhile, private rents have risen 20% since Local Housing Allowance was last linked to market rents. A family in Gloucester faces a monthly shortfall of £160 between their rent and their housing support. The April wage rise doesn't touch that problem.

What Reform UK Would Do

Reform UK's position is clear: raise the personal allowance to £20,000. Take the lowest earners out of income tax entirely. Stop using fiscal drag as a backdoor tax increase and be honest with the public about what things cost and who's paying for them.

We'd also scrap the employer National Insurance increase that came in last year — the single biggest hit to businesses and jobs in recent memory. Small businesses across Preston East and across the country are telling me the same thing: they can't afford to hire, they can't afford to grow, and they're being taxed into the ground by a government that claims to be pro-worker while making it more expensive to employ people.

Low tax, high growth, honest government. That's what British workers deserve. What they're getting instead is frozen allowances, scrapped reliefs, and a Treasury that treats every household budget as its personal cash machine.