A 2p rise on the main rates of UK income tax would likely raise on the order of £15–20 billion a year , depending on exactly which bands rise, the timing, and how people and companies respond.

Core estimates

  • HMRC-style modelling reported in the press suggests that adding 1p to the basic rate alone could raise around £7–8 billion a year by the late 2020s.
  • If 1p were added to all main bands , total extra revenue is often put in the high single‑digit billions per 1p.
  • Scaling that up, a 2p increase across the main bands is commonly described by economists as needing to be at least that large to help plug a fiscal gap of roughly £30 billion , implying something like £15–20+ billion per year in gross terms.

So when people ask “how much would 2p on income tax raise?”, most current UK commentary is implicitly talking about tens of billions, not just a few billion , with wide uncertainty because it depends on:

  1. Whether the 2p is:
    • Only on the basic rate ,
    • Only on higher/additional rates , or
    • On all rates at once.
  1. The year (because incomes and the tax base grow over time).
  1. Any offsetting cuts (for example the often‑discussed plan of +2p income tax / −2p National Insurance , which can be close to revenue‑neutral for many workers while still raising more from pensioners and landlords).

What this means in practice

  • Think tank and media analysis in late 2025 frames a 2p rise in income tax as one of the “big levers” likely to be considered if the government wants to raise something on the order of £30 billion to stabilise the public finances.
  • At a household level, illustrative calculations show:
    • Someone on £35,000 paying a 1p rise across all bands would be down roughly a couple of hundred pounds a year , so 2p would roughly double that.
* Higher earners see proportionally larger cash losses, because more of their income sits in higher bands.

Forum / “latest news” angle

  • In current UK political and forum discussions , the phrase “2p on income tax” is heavily linked to:
    • Debates over whether Labour will or should use this to fix a £30bn+ “black hole”.
* Arguments about fairness between **workers vs pensioners and landlords** , especially if National Insurance is cut at the same time.

In most of those debates, the rough working assumption is:
2p on income tax = mid‑teens to around twenty billion pounds a year in extra revenue , before behavioural effects and offsets.

TL;DR:
If you hear politicians or commentators talk about “sticking 2p on income tax,” they are usually talking about raising on the order of £15–20+ billion a year , with the exact figure hinging on which bands go up and what else in the system changes.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.