UK Chancellor Healey is reportedly rejecting calls to equalise capital gains tax and income tax rates, FT reports citing sources; Treasury could still decide to raise CGT by a small amount

Pre-Budget kite-flying of this kind is a well-established pattern in UK fiscal reporting: Treasury-sourced stories circulate ahead of the statement, some survive to the dispatch box and many are walked back, so sourced-but-unconfirmed reports have historically been treated as direction rather than commitment. The substance here is the removal of the more aggressive option, full equalisation of CGT with income tax, which had been the tail scenario hanging over sterling assets and domestically exposed equities; ruling it out while keeping a smaller rise in play fits the standard sequencing where the harsher variant is briefed early so the eventual measure reads as moderate. The entrepreneurial relief element, aimed at recycling business-sale proceeds back into the UK, echoes past episodes where governments paired a rate increase with a carve-out to blunt the charge of penalising risk-taking, and the design details of any such relief typically matter more for behaviour than the headline rate. For gilts the channel is fiscal credibility: CGT changes raise modest sums, so the read-through to issuance and the Debt Management Office remit is limited unless it signals the broader shape of revenue-raising. The follow-ons worth noting are further Treasury-sourced briefings clarifying the scale of any increase, the Office for Budget Responsibility costing, and whether the measure is confirmed on Budget day itself, since that is when briefed options harden into policy.