Is That It? What The Autumn Budget Means for People Who Love Cars

By Craig Breward, Principal at Breward Financial Planning

Budget day has a rhythm of its own. The red box on the steps of Number 11, the cameras, the speculation, the speech, the rush of documents. Then the Chancellor sits down, and the question that follows is the shortest in politics.

Is that it?

Kemi Badenoch was first to say it out loud, in her response. She meant it as an attack. For most people watching, it landed as a description.

This was John Healey’s first Budget. The third from the Labour party, delivered three months after Andy Burnham moved into Number 10, and one of the least dramatic in years. No big personal tax rise. No raid on capital gains. Not a single mention of inheritance tax. And after two autumns of leaks and briefings that turned into policy before the Chancellor had even stood up, this one arrived almost silently. The rumour mill barely turned.

The obvious metaphor is a race run behind the safety car. No overtakes, no drama, nobody gambling on cold tyres. 

Frustrating if you had tuned in for a show. Sensible if you simply wanted to get to the end.

There were reasons for the caution. The war in Iran has pushed energy prices up. Inflation is forecast to average 3.1% this year and 3.4% next, before returning to target in 2028. Growth is forecast at 1.2% this year, then 1% in 2027 – a downgrade. Interest on a debt approaching £3 trillion costs roughly £11 billion a month. Healey had a small cushion and no appetite for a fight he could avoid.

So instead of a headline, we got a series of small adjustments. And a handful of them matter rather more to this audience than the bulletins suggested.

Start with the one genuinely good line for anyone, like us, who drives for pleasure. Fuel duty has been frozen for a sixteenth consecutive year, and the temporary 5p cut has been extended again, this time to July 2027. Whatever you think of the policy, that is more than a decade and a half without an increase in the headline rate, and if you run something with a large engine and a modest range, you will feel that more than most.

Then there is mileage. The 55p per mile tax-free rate for the first 10,000 business miles has been made permanent, and the rate above 10,000 miles rises from 25p to 35p from April 2027. If you use your own car for work, or you run a business and reimburse people for theirs, that second change is worth a conversation with your accountant.

On the electric side of the garage, nothing changed today, but the direction of travel has not changed either. The 3p per mile charge for electric vehicles arrives in 2028/29, and from April 2027 company car and fuel benefits must be reported through payroll in real time. Electric motoring is being normalised rather than punished, but the free lunch is being cleared away, one course at a time.

If there was a collective sigh of relief this afternoon, it came from anyone holding assets they might one day sell. Capital gains tax rates were not touched, despite weeks of speculation that they would be. For a government that needed revenue and had ruled out income tax, that was not a small decision.

The relief is not uniform, though.

Business Asset Disposal Relief…the 18% rate business owners pay on the sale of their company, now applies to the first £500,000 of lifetime gains rather than £1 million, from 6 April 2027. In cash terms the relief is now worth a maximum of around £30,000. If you have been half-planning an exit in the next few years, that half-plan needs to become a real timetable, because the difference between selling this tax year and next is now measurable.

In its place, a new Founders’ Relief: 10% on up to £10 million of lifetime gains for founders of qualifying high-growth companies, also from April 2027. On paper it is generous. In practice the conditions are expected to be tight and the detail is still to be consulted on. Worth watching closely if you built something from scratch; worth ignoring if you did not.

Savings and rental income took the hit instead. From April 2027 the tax rates on both rise by a further two percentage points – on top of the two announced last year – taking the basic rate to 24%, higher to 44% and additional to 49%. For landlords, particularly those who have borrowed heavily against residential property, the arithmetic has changed materially. For everyone else, it is a reminder that tax-sheltered wrappers are worth more each year, not less.

Which is presumably why the Chancellor quietly abandoned his predecessor’s plan to cut the cash ISA allowance to £12,000 for the under 65s. It stays at £20,000 for everyone. A new ‘Starter ISA’ for first-time investors was announced with almost no detail attached, and the First Time Buyer ISA will replace the Lifetime ISA from April 2029.

Inheritance tax was not mentioned at all. For a Budget that needed money, that is worth pausing on.

It does not mean nothing is happening. Most unused pensions are still being brought you’re your estate for inheritance tax from April 2027. Agricultural and business property relief remains capped at £2.5 million. The high-value council tax surcharge on properties worth £2 million or more still arrives in April 2028, banded, with the largest homes facing £7,500 a year. And one genuinely helpful detail buried in the small print: the two-year rule on pension death benefits has been removed, so income tax will no longer apply simply because a payment is made more than two years after death.

No news is not the same as no change. If your estate plan was built before 2024, it is now out of date.

Here is the thing about a Budget like this. None of it, taken individually, is dramatic. Two percent on savings income. Two percent on rent. A relief halved. An allowance changed. Each one is a tenth of a second a corner, and a tenth does not feel like much in the car. Over a season, it is the championship.

For anyone with a business, a portfolio, a rental property and a pension, this Budget will not change your life this week. It will change your lifetime tax bill, quietly, over the next five years.

Badenoch’s response was noticeably warmer than last year’s, and she gave the government credit for leaving capital gains tax alone. Her real attack was on defence: the Chancellor has spoken about spending 3% of GDP on defence by 2030, and the detail has been pushed to next year’s Spending Review. That is the argument to watch, because defence is where the next Budget’s money is already committed.

So what do you actually do? Three things, in order of urgency.

If a business sale is anywhere on your horizon, model the BADR change now. Not in April.

If your estate sits above the inheritance tax threshold, review it before April 2027, when most unused pensions come into scope. That is the largest change in this next tax year, and it was the one thing the Chancellor did not say out loud.

And if neither applies, do very little. Which is, on the whole, the correct response to a Budget that changed very little.

Budgets come and go. This one will be remembered, if at all, as the one nobody needed to worry about. That is rare in politics, and worth enjoying while it lasts. There is a winter of driving ahead, another season to plan, and with any luck a few more reasons to be behind the wheel rather than in front of a spreadsheet!

Uncertainty has a habit of making us imagine the worst long before anything has actually happened. Today, for once, it didn’t happen at all.

Breward Financial Planning is an Appointed Representative of and represents only St. James’s Place Wealth Management plc (which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority) for the purpose of advising solely on the group’s wealth management products and services, more details of which are set out on the group’s website www.sjp.co.uk/products.

SJP approved 11/11/2026