Households will lose £2 in stealth freezes for every £1 in Truss tax cuts, says IFS

For every pound households receive through Liz Truss's headline cuts to tax, twice as much will be taken away in "stealthy freezes", a leading economic think tank has warned.

- KATE DEVLIN

The figures come even before millions are predicted to suffer a hike in mortgage payments as a result of Kwasi Kwarteng's disastrous mini-Budget.

Earlier this week Ms Truss was forced by her own MPs to dump one part of the Budget, plans to axe the 45p tax rate, paid by those who earn more than £150,000.

But the fiscal plan 10 days ago still includes a number of major tax cuts, including reductions in national insurance contributions and 1p off the basic tax rate.

However, these come during what is a four-year freeze to income tax thresholds. Many other tax and benefit thresholds and values are also frozen indefinitely, the IFS warned.

Just the four-year freeze to the personal allowance alone means that by 2025-26 an extra 1.4 million people will be paying income tax, a total of 35.4 million, or two in every three adults.

The same freeze on the higher-rate threshold also means that by the same time an extra 1.6 million will be paying that, a record total of 7.7 million people.