The Autumn Budget will be delivered on Wednesday 28 October, with a full Office for Budget Responsibility forecast published the same day. It is Chancellor John Healey's first Budget and the first of this premiership, which is reason enough for the speculation to be louder than usual.
In the four weeks between now and then, internationally mobile clients will be told a great many things about what is coming. Some of it will be right. Most of it is guesswork dressed as insight, and a certain amount of it will be dressed as urgency by people who benefit from urgency.
What follows is an attempt to sort the three categories: what is already law and requires no Budget at all, what is genuinely being briefed and with what degree of confidence, and what is simply noise. The discipline I would urge is straightforward — act on the first category, prepare for the second, and ignore the third.
What we actually know
Only a few things, and it is worth being clear about how few.
The date is fixed. The Chancellor is John Healey. The OBR will publish an updated economic and fiscal outlook alongside the statement, which matters because the forecast constrains what the Chancellor can plausibly do as much as any political preference does.
The manifesto commitment not to raise the headline rates of income tax, National Insurance or VAT for working people remains in place. That single constraint shapes nearly everything else, and it is the reason most forecasters expect revenue to be found through threshold freezes and through targeted taxes on wealth, savings, dividends and property rather than through the main rates. If you want a framework for reading the rumours, that is it: measures that raise money without touching the three protected rates are the plausible ones.
Everything beyond that is inference.
What is already law, and needs no Budget
This is the category most people skip, and it is the only one where planning is genuinely well-founded.
Pensions come inside the estate for inheritance tax from 6 April 2027. This was announced at the Autumn Budget 2024, legislated, and has a commencement date. It does not need to be re-announced on 28 October and it is not contingent on anything the Chancellor says. Most unused pension funds and death benefits will form part of the estate, with the spouse, civil partner and charity exemptions preserved.
Inheritance tax scope has been residence-based since 6 April 2025. Domicile and deemed domicile were replaced by a long-term residence test: broadly, someone UK resident in at least 10 of the previous 20 tax years is within scope on worldwide assets. For anyone who has left the UK, or is planning to, this is the single most consequential fact in the system, and it is already settled. Our wealth expatriation hub deals with it in more depth, and the tax residency tests set out how residence itself is determined.
Two settled rules, both with real consequences, both available to plan around today with no guesswork whatsoever. I would rather a client spent the next month on these than on the rumours.
What is being briefed, and how firmly
Now the second category. I have tried to indicate confidence honestly rather than presenting everything at the same volume.
Capital gains tax — the most cited candidate. The main rate rose from 20% to 24% in October 2024. The Treasury is reported to be modelling further increases, and one option under discussion is moving capital gains rates closer to income tax rates. This is the change most advisers expect in some form. It is not confirmed.
Dividends — a continuing target. Dividend tax already stands at 10.75% at the basic rate and 35.75% at the higher rate, both up two percentage points from 2025/26. A further rise would not breach the manifesto pledge, which is precisely why it keeps appearing in predictions.
Property — speculation, with one thing ruled out. There is talk that the £2 million threshold could be lowered and charges increased. Against that, wholesale replacement of stamp duty and council tax with an annual property tax has been ruled out for this Budget. That is a useful example of how the two categories differ: one is a rumour, the other is a stated exclusion.
A wealth tax — floated, and widely judged unlikely. Proposals for a 2% annual levy on net assets above £10 million have circulated, with campaigners suggesting it could raise around £24 billion a year. Most serious commentary treats it as improbable in this Budget. I would not restructure anything on the strength of it.
The non-dom evidence, which is the closest thing we have to a controlled experiment
There is one recent change large enough to have produced data, and it is worth looking at because it cuts against the loudest version of the story.
Following the non-dom reforms, HMRC figures show a net drop of around 1,200 wealthy non-dom taxpayers — a figure that matches the OBR's own forecast. Critics argue the departures are running faster than expected, and that a small number of very wealthy individuals account for a disproportionate share of the tax at stake, which is a fair point about concentration rather than about volume. An HMRC review is under way.
I draw two things from that. The first is that the behavioural response to a significant tax change was real but broadly as predicted, not the exodus some forecast. The second is that concentration matters: when a small group pays a large share, modest numbers of departures can have outsized revenue effects, which is exactly the sort of consideration that makes a Chancellor cautious about the next increment. Neither observation tells you what will happen on 28 October. Both are better evidence than the predictions.
What is worth doing regardless of the outcome
The useful test for any pre-Budget action is simple: would you still be content with this decision if the Budget contained nothing at all on the subject?
Reviewing where you are actually resident, and counting the tax years, passes that test easily. Residence now determines inheritance tax scope, and the count is a matter of fact rather than opinion. Knowing your position — and knowing whether you are approaching the ten-year threshold in either direction — is valuable whatever happens.
Checking pension nominations and expressions of wish passes it too. The April 2027 change is coming regardless, and many nominations were written on assumptions that no longer hold.
Understanding your unrealised gains, and what a rate change would cost on each, passes it as well — as information. Knowing the number is not the same as acting on it, and the distinction matters more than it sounds.
Reviewing an estate against the current rules, rather than the rules as they were before April 2025, passes it. A plan built on domicile is built on a concept that no longer governs the outcome. Our tax planning pages and the UK pensions hub cover the mechanics.
What I would not do on a rumour
Crystallising a large gain in September to pre-empt a capital gains rise that may not come is the obvious example. You pay a certain tax now to avoid a possible higher tax later, you lose the compounding on the money paid, and if the rate does not change you have simply made a donation. That calculation can favour acting — for someone already intending to sell within months, the timing question is genuine — but it has to be run on the actual numbers, not on the mood.
Restructuring ownership of assets, moving residence, or unwinding a long-standing arrangement in the next four weeks carries the same problem in a more expensive form. Those decisions are slow to reverse and often costly to execute. A rumour is not a sufficient basis for either.
The pattern I have watched for thirty years is consistent: the clients who fare worst around a Budget are rarely the ones who were caught by a change. They are the ones who acted decisively on something that turned out not to happen, and who cannot easily undo it. The volatility around this year's gold price, which I wrote about earlier this month, is a version of the same lesson in a different market — certainty about direction is the most expensive thing an investor can buy.
After 28 October
Once the statement is delivered and the OBR forecast is published, speculation is replaced by text, and the text is what matters. Most measures have implementation dates that give time to respond properly. A few take effect immediately, which is precisely why the reversible preparations above are worth having done in advance — they put you in a position to act quickly on fact rather than slowly on rumour.
We will publish an assessment of what the Budget actually does for internationally mobile clients once the detail is available rather than before. If you would like your own position reviewed in the meantime — particularly the residence count, which underpins more than most people realise — that conversation is worth having this month.
This article describes the position as at 28 September 2026 and reflects announced and legislated measures together with publicly reported expectations. Expectations are not policy, and nothing here should be read as a prediction of what the Budget will contain. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and may change. This is information, not a personal recommendation.
Sources: HM Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility, Autumn Budget 2026 date and forecast confirmation. HMRC policy paper on inheritance tax and unused pension funds, and Finance Act 2025 section 44 (long-term UK residence). Published Budget expectations from UK accountancy and private client practices, September 2026, identified in the text as expectations rather than announced measures.
This article is for general information only and does not constitute financial, legal or tax advice, a personal recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any investment. Rules, prices and regulations change; verify current requirements with a qualified adviser before acting.