What does the pledge mean?

In full, the headline pledge on tax in Labour’s 2024 election manifesto reads: “Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.”

Exactly how this pledge should be interpreted has been the subject of much debate. There’s a lot to unpick, so our Government Tracker is monitoring progress on the different elements of this pledge separately. Here we look at the commitment on income tax—we’re also monitoring the commitments on working people, National Insurance and VAT.

The UK government is responsible for setting income tax rates in England and Northern Ireland, so we’ve assumed this is the focus of Labour’s pledge. Some powers to vary income tax are devolved to Scotland and Wales.

Income tax is paid on earnings above £12,570. There are currently three different rates of income tax in England and Northern Ireland: a ‘basic rate’ of 20% paid on earnings between a threshold of £12,571 and £50,270; a ‘higher rate’ of 40% paid on earnings between £50,271 and £125,140; and an ‘additional rate’ of 45% paid on earnings above £125,140.

The pledge explicitly refers to “rates” and does not mention the thresholds at which these rates take effect. These thresholds affect the amount of someone’s income that is taxable—freezing or lowering these thresholds means that people pay more tax than they otherwise would have done were the thresholds to have increased in line with inflation, as is the norm.

We’ve not found any examples of Labour explicitly ruling changes to thresholds in or out of the scope of this pledge prior to the 2024 election. However as of November 2025 the government has stressed that this commitment only applied to the rates of income tax, and does not cover thresholds.

It’s also worth noting that the pledge appears to be part of a wider commitment to not increase taxes on “working people”, a term which isn’t explained in the manifesto and which Labour politicians have subsequently struggled to consistently define. This caveat has caused significant confusion. When we asked the Treasury for its definition of “working people” in November 2024, it told us this referred to not increasing taxes in people’s payslips.

Since launching our Government Tracker in 2024 we’ve said that Labour has failed to clearly explain the parameters of its manifesto commitments on tax.

This kind of ambiguity isn’t good enough—as we’ve written elsewhere, commitments that are subject to interpretation are a recipe for confusion, and risk fuelling cynicism among voters. As we set out in our manifesto standards ahead of the election, manifestos should define things clearly and consistently and be phrased in a way that a reasonable person is likely to understand.

What progress has been made?

We’ve struggled to find an appropriate rating for this pledge in the wake of the 2025 Budget, because of the confusion around its original scope.

If you fully accept the government’s framing of the manifesto commitment, as applying only to rates (which is explicitly mentioned in the wording of the pledge) and taxes in people’s payslips (which isn’t explicitly mentioned, but which the government has said is implied by the term “working people”), then the letter of the pledge is still being met. The basic, higher and additional rates of income tax on earnings have not been increased.

However, there are a number of reasons that some have disputed whether the pledge has indeed been kept.

Firstly, changes made in the 2025 Budget will have the effect of increasing the amount of income tax “working people” pay, even if the headline rates remain the same.

In November 2025 chancellor Rachel Reeves announced that income tax thresholds, which were frozen under decisions taken by the previous government until April 2028, will remain frozen for a further three years, until April 2031.

The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that this will result in 780,000 more basic-rate, 920,000 more higher-rate and 4,000 more additional-rate taxpayers by 2029/30 than previously expected.

The commitment on income tax was part of a wider pledge to “not increase taxes on working people”, which Ms Reeves herself has acknowledged extending the threshold freezes will do.

What’s more, in her 2024 Budget speech she appeared to say extending threshold freezes would breach Labour’s manifesto commitment, saying: “I have come to the conclusion that extending the threshold freeze would hurt working people. It would take more money out of their payslips.

“I am keeping every single promise on tax that I made in our manifesto, so there will be no extension of the freeze in income tax and national insurance thresholds.”

We’ve written more here about what the chancellor has said about threshold freezes.

It’s worth noting the public appear divided about the impact of income tax threshold freezes—a YouGov poll carried out ahead of the 2025 Budget asked specifically about the impact of freezing the higher rate threshold. Some 30% of respondents said that based on their understanding of what Labour had promised, keeping the higher-rate threshold the same, rather than increasing it with inflation, would break what Labour pledged—26% said it wouldn’t, and almost half (44%) said they didn’t know.

Finally, the 2025 Budget did increase the headline rates of income tax on other forms of income beyond earnings. From April 2027 there will be a two percentage point increase in the basic, higher and additional rates of income tax for savings, taking them to 22%, 42% and 47% respectively. Tax rates on money earned through dividends and property income will also increase by two percentage points.

These increases do not affect the taxes in people’s payslips, which is how the Treasury told us in November 2024 it was defining the phrase “working people”, which appears as a caveat to the commitment on income tax. But if you were to take a broader definition of the phrase “working people”, then these increases could be seen as increasing the rate of income tax which some working people will have to pay.

As a result of all the above, for now we are rating this pledge as “Unclear or disputed”. And because the government’s income tax threshold increase means that from April 2028 people will pay more tax on their earnings than they otherwise would have, we’re currently rating the wider pledge to not increase taxes on working people as ‘Not kept’.