What is the Budget?
What is the Budget?
The Budget is a plan the government makes about the money they will spend over the next year and where the money will come from.
The Budget usually happens once a year.
The government will tell everyone about the Budget for 2025 and 2026 on Wednesday 26 November.
The person in charge of how the government spends money is called the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
They are a
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament (MP) is a person who speaks up about what people in their area need. People in each area choose their MP by voting for them.
(MP) as well.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer for this Budget is Rachel Reeves MP.
She will give a speech in Parliament Parliament is a group of people who make laws and check what the government is doing. to say what the government is going to spend money on and where the money will come from.
The Budget says how the government will spend money on things like:
- health and
social care
Social care means the services that give care and support to people who need it.
- benefits
- education Education is when you learn things. When you fill in a form to get a job, education means you write where you went to school, college or university.
- transport
The government uses the Budget to say where they will get the money to pay for those things.
The main way the government gets money is through
tax
Tax is the money that pays for things like schools, hospitals and the police. There are different types of taxes like income tax, VAT and council tax.
.
Tax is money that people and businesses have to pay to the government.
You pay tax when you buy things like:
- some food and drinks
- clothes for adults
- fuel like petrol.
If you have a job, some of your wages might go to the government as tax.
During the Budget, the Chancellor will tell people how much tax they will need to pay in the future.
Thank you to the National Lottery Community Fund for their generous grant, funding this work.
This easy read Easy Read is a way of making written information easier to understand. Pictures are usually added next to the writing. was first published on 21 November 2025.
Last updated 16 July 2026