Reform would raise tax free threshold to £20k

Will Drysdale, Senior Reporter, Business & Accountancy Daily

Nigel Farage spoke today in Central London where he announced if Reform were elected, government savings would come in the billions from scrapping Net Zero and the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) agenda.

The Reform UK party has already opened its own Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) inspired by his acquaintance, Elon Musk, and will be evaluating local government spending at Reform controlled councils’.

As of this month Reform UK is in control of five councils and has already told diversity and climate staff in these organisations to find new jobs earlier this month.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage would like to increase the threshold when the lowest earners start to pay tax, the party’s most drastic and costly measure. Currently workers start to pay tax on anything earned over the £12,570 tax free threshold, but Farage wants to increase this to £20,000.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) Be the Chancellor tool lets you experiment with this. Increasing the minimum threshold by just £3,000 would cost the government £31.4bn a year, according to the IFS. Another £5,000 increase would push this towards costing £80bn per year.

Farage said raising the threshold would ‘encourage people to get off benefits and to go back to work’ but was adamant his numbers would add up.

However, Reform wants to scrap Net Zero all together as it is currently costing £45bn per year, as well as cutting the DEI agenda completely to save £7bn per year. Asylum seeker accommodation also costs the taxpayer £4bn per year, which Reform would like to stop.

Farage said: ‘If we win the next election, we will scrap net zero, there will be no more asylum hotels or houses of multiple occupancy, we will scrap the DEI agenda which is costing the taxpayer up to £7bn a year.

‘Yes, I do accept that these proposals are expensive, but I genuinely believe that we can pay for it.’

Cutting these would not come close to making up the threshold being raised, but if the party was to get into No 10 then Farage believes a UK DOGE would cut unnecessary spending like it plans to do at local councils.

Farage is intending to announce the amount saved within local councils this time next year after saying: ‘If we find it at local government level, we’ll find it at national government level too.’

Farage also said his party will support lifting the two-child benefit cap, saying it was ‘not because we support benefits culture,’ but because ‘it is the right thing to do.’ However, the Reform leader did say this was not a ‘silver bullet’ to end poverty.

The aspiring prime minister also would not commit to keeping the triple lock on pensions, but has not ruled it out, saying it was something the party has not considered yet. ‘We will [discuss the triple lock] between now and the next election. We are, as you can see, building out our policy platform’.