Budget 2024 Summary: Spring + Autumn Recap of UK Tax Changes

2024 was unusual in modern UK fiscal history - two full Budgets, delivered by two different Chancellors from two different parties, both bearing on the rules in force for the 2024/25 tax year. This page recaps every change that hit a UK payslip, capital-gain computation, property completion or self-assessment return as a result of the March and October 2024 events. Figures are anchored to the same TaxRuleset that powers our calculators, with gov.uk sources listed in the citations.

Headline: the year of the NIC cut and the Labour reset

The Conservative Spring Budget 2024 on 6 March was the last set-piece announcement of the Sunak government before the 4 July general election. Its centrepiece was a second cut to employee National Insurance in three months, from 10% to 8%, following on from the 12% to 10% cut that took effect on 6 January 2024. It also took self-employed Class 4 down a further 2 points, so that with the Autumn Statement 2023 cut it fell from 9% to 6% from 6 April 2024 (the end of compulsory Class 2 from the same date had been announced at the Autumn Statement), lifted the High Income Child Benefit Charge lower threshold from £50,000 to £60,000, and announced the end of the remittance basis for UK-resident non-domiciles from April 2025.

Labour won the July 2024 election and Rachel Reeves delivered her first Budget on 30 October 2024. It was a markedly different fiscal event in tone and scale. The Autumn Budget 2024 raised employer Class 1 NIC from 13.8% to 15% and cut the Secondary Threshold from £9,100 to £5,000 (both effective 6 April 2025), aligned Capital Gains Tax rates on non-property assets to the property rates (18% and 24% from 30 October), raised the Stamp Duty additional-dwelling surcharge from 3% to 5% with effect the next day, ended the VAT exemption on private school fees from 1 January 2025, confirmed the abolition of the non-dom regime from 6 April 2025, and announced that unused pension funds and pension death benefits would be brought into Inheritance Tax from April 2027. The Personal Allowance and the income-tax bands stayed frozen at the existing 2021/22 levels through both events.

Personal Allowance and the frozen thresholds

The Personal Allowance for 2024/25 remained £12,570, the same cash figure as 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24. The higher-rate threshold stayed at £50,270 (the Personal Allowance plus a £37,700 basic-rate band), and the additional-rate threshold stayed at £125,140 - the same point at which the £100,000 PA taper finishes withdrawing the allowance to zero. Neither Chancellor moved any of the three values.

The PA taper itself was unchanged: the allowance reduces by £1 for every £2 of adjusted net income above £100,000, creating an effective marginal rate of 60% on Income Tax alone (62% with the 2% employee NI rate that applies above the Upper Earnings Limit) on the £25,140 slice between £100,000 and £125,140. The 60% trap, a side effect of the freeze, pulled a steadily larger share of higher earners into its grip as pay drifted up against a fixed nominal £100,000 anchor.

Income tax rates and bands (England, Wales, Northern Ireland)

The 2024/25 bands were identical to 2023/24. The Spring and Autumn Budgets both left them unchanged. The 20% basic, 40% higher and 45% additional rates continued on the same three-band shape that has applied since the additional-rate threshold was cut from £150,000 to £125,140 in April 2023.

The 40% band still covered everything from £50,270 of gross up to £125,140, although the Personal Allowance taper lifts the marginal Income Tax rate to 60% between £100,000 and £125,140. The 45% additional rate continued to bite from £125,140, the same point at which the Personal Allowance fully tapered out, producing the quirk where the marginal rate falls from 62% (the PA-taper band including NI) to 47% above it.

National Insurance: the big NIC cut of 2024

The most visible payslip change of 2024/25 was the second employee NI cut in three months. The Autumn Statement 2023 had already cut the Class 1 main rate from 12% to 10% with effect from 6 January 2024. The Spring Budget 2024 then cut it again, from 10% to 8%, with effect from 6 April 2024 - so workers entered 2024/25 on a 8% main rate that was four percentage points lower than at the start of the previous tax year.

• Employee Class 1 main rate: 8% on weekly earnings between the Primary Threshold of £12,570 a year and the Upper Earnings Limit of £50,270 a year. Cut from 10% on 6 April 2024.
• Employee Class 1 upper rate: 2% on earnings above the Upper Earnings Limit. Unchanged.
• Employer Class 1 secondary rate: 13.8% on earnings above the £9,100 Secondary Threshold during 2024/25 - the rate that prevailed until 5 April 2025. The Autumn Budget legislated the rise to 15% with a £5,000 ST from 6 April 2025, taking effect at the start of the next tax year.
• Self-employed Class 4 main rate: 6% on profits between the Lower Profits Limit of £12,570 and the Upper Profits Limit of £50,270. Cut from 9% on 6 April 2024.
• Self-employed Class 4 upper rate: 2% on profits above the UPL. Unchanged.
• Class 2: mandatory charge above the Small Profits Threshold abolished from 6 April 2024 - voluntary contributions retained for those topping up State Pension entitlement. Weekly rate £3.45 for voluntary payers below the SPT.

A worker on £30,000 saved £349 a year in NI from the Spring 2024 cut alone (10% to 8% on earnings above the £12,570 Primary Threshold). Against the 12% rate in force before 6 January 2024, the two cuts together were worth £697 a year on the same salary. A self-employed person with £35,000 of profit saved £673 a year in Class 4 against the 9% rate of 2023/24, before the end of compulsory Class 2.

Dividend allowance and rates

The Dividend Allowance was halved at the start of 2024/25, from £1,000 to £500 - the final step in a two-stage cut announced in the Autumn Statement 2022 (£2,000 in 2022/23 to £1,000 in 2023/24 to £500 from 6 April 2024). Neither 2024 Budget moved the allowance further. The dividend tax rates themselves were unchanged:

• Ordinary rate (basic-rate band): 8.75%
• Upper rate (higher-rate band): 33.75%
• Additional rate (additional-rate band): 39.35%

Dividends did not attract National Insurance, which kept the structural reason a limited-company contractor outside IR35 took home more than an equivalently-paid employee. With the dividend allowance now at £500, a small-company director on a typical "low salary, dividend top-up" mix would pay basic-rate dividend tax on almost every pound of distributed profit - a fairly different arithmetic from the £2,000 allowance of 2022/23 only two years earlier. The contractor calculator models the full mix end-to-end.

Capital Gains Tax: aligned to property rates

The Autumn Budget 2024 made the biggest structural change to CGT in a decade. From 30 October 2024 the basic-rate CGT on non-property assets rose from 10% to 18%, and the higher / additional-rate from 20% to 24%, aligning shares and other non-residential gains with the rates that already applied to residential property, whose higher rate had already been cut from 28% to 24% from 6 April 2024. One 18% / 24% schedule then applied to most gains made by individuals; Business Asset Disposal Relief, Investors' Relief and carried interest kept their own rates.

• Basic-rate CGT: 18% on gains falling within the basic-rate Income Tax band (was 10% on non-property assets pre-30 October 2024).
• Higher / Additional-rate CGT: 24% on gains above the basic-rate band (was 20% on non-property assets pre-30 October 2024).
• Annual Exempt Amount (AEA): £3,000 for 2024/25 - the second step of a cut announced at the Autumn Statement 2022, from £12,300 (2022/23) to £6,000 (2023/24) and then £3,000 from 6 April 2024. Neither 2024 Budget moved it.
• Business Asset Disposal Relief (BADR): stayed at 10% on the first £1m of lifetime qualifying gains until 5 April 2025. The Autumn Budget 2024 set the rise to 14% from 6 April 2025 and 18% from 6 April 2026, both now in force, with the same rates for Investors' Relief.
• Investors' Relief lifetime limit: cut from £10m to £1m for disposals from 30 October 2024 onwards.

Because the rate change took effect mid-tax-year, taxpayers with disposals in 2024/25 may need to compute gains either side of 30 October 2024 at the different rates. The CGT calculator applies the current 18% / 24% schedule; gains made before 30 October 2024 need the earlier 10% / 20% rates applied by hand.

Stamp Duty: 5% additional-dwelling surcharge

The Higher Rates for Additional Dwellings surcharge on second homes, buy-to-lets and corporate purchases of residential property in England and Northern Ireland was raised from 3% to 5% with effect from 31 October 2024 (the day after the Autumn Budget). Standard SDLT bands were unchanged at the Autumn Budget but were reset on 1 April 2025 when the temporary nil-rate threshold lift (introduced in September 2022) was unwound.

• 0% on the slice up to £250,000 during 2024/25 (£125,000 from 1 April 2025).
• 5% from £250,001 to £925,000 during 2024/25.
• 10% from £925,001 to £1.5 million.
• 12% above £1.5 million.
• First-time buyers: 0% to £425,000 during 2024/25 (£300,000 from 1 April 2025), 5% from there to £625,000 (£500,000 from 1 April 2025).
• Additional-property surcharge: 3% to 30 October 2024, then 5% from 31 October 2024. Applies on top of every band.
• Non-UK-resident surcharge: 2% on every band, on a purchase of £40,000 or more (FA 2003 Sch 9A para 2). Unchanged.

On a typical £400,000 buy-to-let purchase the surcharge increase added £8,000 to the SDLT bill overnight (from £12,000 of surcharge on £400,000 at 3% to £20,000 at 5%). Scotland uses its own Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) and Wales uses Land Transaction Tax (LTT), neither of which was directly changed by the UK Budget. See the Stamp Duty calculator for full worked numbers, or the LBTT and LTT calculators for the devolved equivalents.

Non-dom abolition and VAT on private school fees

The most politically charged piece of the 2024 Budget cycle was the abolition of the remittance basis of taxation for UK-resident non-domiciled individuals. The Spring Budget 2024 announced the abolition from 6 April 2025, replacing the regime with a four-year Foreign Income and Gains (FIG) regime for new UK residents. The Autumn Budget 2024 removed the planned 50% discount on foreign income for 2025/26, extended the Temporary Repatriation Facility to three years and confirmed a residence-based test for inheritance tax.

The post-April 2025 regime lets new UK arrivals claim relief from UK tax on foreign income and gains for their first four years of residence (the FIG regime), provided they were not UK-resident in any of the ten preceding tax years. After four years they fall fully into UK arising-basis taxation - the same regime as any other UK resident. The protected non-resident trust structures for long-term non-doms were phased out, with a Temporary Repatriation Facility (TRF) introduced to encourage remittance of pre-April 2025 foreign income and gains at preferential rates (12% in 2025/26 and 2026/27, 15% in 2027/28, per Finance Act 2025 Schedule 10).

VAT on private school fees was the other manifesto promise made flesh at the Autumn Budget. From 1 January 2025, fees for education and vocational training at private schools became subject to 20% VAT. Pre-payments made on or after 29 July 2024 for terms starting on or after 1 January 2025 were also caught. Charitable business rates relief for private schools in England was removed from April 2025.

High Income Child Benefit Charge: threshold raised

HICBC had become one of the most criticised features of the personal-tax system by 2023 - a £50,000 trigger that had been static since 2013 while wages had risen materially, pulling hundreds of thousands of additional families into the charge. The Spring Budget 2024 made two changes from 6 April 2024:

• Lower threshold: raised from £50,000 to £60,000 of adjusted net income.
• Upper threshold (full clawback): raised from £60,000 to £80,000.
• Taper rate: 1% of the Child Benefit award per £200 of adjusted net income above the lower threshold (was £100 per percentage point) - a smoother phase-out.

The plan to move to a household-income basis by April 2026 was announced at the Spring Budget but the Labour government confirmed at the Autumn Budget 2024 that it would not proceed. HICBC therefore remains an individual-income charge, computed against each parent's adjusted net income separately. The High Income Child Benefit Charge explainer models the post-2024 thresholds and the new £200 step.

ISA and pension allowances

Tax-advantaged savings vehicles kept their 2023/24 headline numbers through both 2024 Budgets:

• ISA allowance: £20,000 (unchanged since 2017/18). The Spring Budget 2024 announced a £5,000 "British ISA" with an extra subscription limit for UK-listed equities; the Autumn Budget 2024 confirmed it would not go ahead.
• Junior ISA: £9,000 per child per year.
• Lifetime ISA: £4,000 (counts toward the £20,000 total), with 25% government bonus.
• Pension Annual Allowance (standard): £60,000, unchanged from 2023/24 when it had been raised from £40,000.
• Tapered Annual Allowance: where threshold income exceeds £200,000, reduces by £1 for every £2 of adjusted income above £260,000, down to a £10,000 floor.
• Money Purchase Annual Allowance (MPAA): £10,000.
• Lump-sum allowance (LSA): £268,275 lifetime tax-free element.
• Lump-sum and death benefit allowance (LSDBA): £1,073,100.

The headline structural change came at the Autumn Budget 2024, which announced that unused pension funds and pension death benefits would be brought into the Inheritance Tax estate from 6 April 2027. This did not affect 2024/25 cash-flow but materially changed the long-run case for using pensions as inter-generational wealth transfer vehicles. The pension annual-allowance calculator models the taper and MPAA mechanics together.

Scotland: parallel six-band regime

Scotland sets its own income-tax rates and bands above the UK-wide Personal Allowance through powers devolved by the Scotland Act 2016. The Scottish Budget 2024-25, delivered by Deputy First Minister Shona Robison on 19 December 2023, added a new 45% Advanced rate on income between £75,000 and £125,140 and raised the Top rate from 47% to 48%. That created the six-band structure in force for 2024/25:

Band	Taxable income	Rate
Starter rate	£0 - £2,306	19%
Scottish basic rate	£2,306 - £13,991	20%
Intermediate rate	£13,991 - £31,092	21%
Higher rate	£31,092 - £62,430	42%
Advanced rate	£62,430 - £125,140	45%
Top rate	£125,140 - above	48%

In cash terms, a £45,000 salary in 2024/25 produced take-home of around £35,920 in rUK and about £35,477 in Scotland - a gap of around £442 a year. National Insurance and the Personal Allowance remained UK-wide, so the Spring 2024 NI cut benefited Scottish and rUK taxpayers equally; the divergence sits entirely in Income Tax above PA. See the Scottish income tax guide for the full set of comparisons across income bands.

Worked example: a £45,000 worker, 2023/24 vs 2024/25

To anchor the page in a concrete payslip, consider a worker earning £45,000 gross in England across the cycle. The salary engine returns the following figures, reproducible directly via the on-site calculator with the tax-year selector:

The 2023/24 column applies the 10% main rate in force from 6 January 2024 to the whole year, so the comparison isolates the Spring Budget 2024 cut: 8% in 2024/25 saved £649 on a £45,000 salary. NI actually paid across 2023/24 was higher, because 12% applied from April 2023 to January 2024. Income Tax was unchanged in cash terms because the bands were frozen at the same nominal levels in both years, and the effective deduction rate fell from 21.6% to 20.2%.

Run any other gross through the salary calculator and switch the tax-year selector between 2023/24 and 2024/25 to see the same delta on your own figures. Every number on this page traces to the same TaxRuleset that powers the on-site calculator, which in turn cites the gov.uk sources listed in the citations and on our methodology page.

Next year and previous coverage

• Budget 2025 summary (Spring Statement + Autumn Budget 2025)
• Budget 2026 summary (current tax year)
• Spring Statement 2026 recap

Related

• Salary calculator
• UK National Insurance rates
• Personal Allowance explained
• £100k tax trap (PA taper)
• Dividend allowance and rates
• Capital Gains Tax calculator
• Stamp Duty calculator
• High Income Child Benefit Charge explainer
• Scottish income tax guide
• Methodology and HMRC sources