John Healey will present his first budget on Wednesday, setting out roughly £1.42tn in day-to-day spending and public investment for this year, with a levy on banks expected as the centrepiece revenue-raiser and a package of cost-of-living measures for households. The budget will set the tone for Andy Burnham's premiership, and despite the chancellor's summer promise of no leaks, much of its contents have already emerged from official and unofficial sources.

Help for households and businesses

The chancellor has promised consumers and businesses "breathing space" through measures aimed at soaring costs. Among them:

• •An extension of parental pay to more than 150,000 additional parents a year, worth £388, covering self-employed fathers and partners who previously missed out.
• •An end to the carer's allowance cliff-edge, so unpaid carers no longer lose more than their allowance once they pass their weekly earnings limit.
• •Removal of import tariffs on more than 100 products, including baked beans, chocolate and gherkins, to bring down shop prices.
• •More than £1bn to help poorer households with gas and electricity bills, mostly through an expansion of the Warm Home Discount, with a possible additional £100 added to the £150 means-tested yearly rebate - funded from taxation rather than bills.
• •Details of the "your first home" first-time buyer scheme announced at Labour's conference last month: a 20% equity loan towards a new-build home, an initial interest-free period and a minimum deposit of 2.5%.

Burnham has already suspended VAT on electricity bills for six months and asked the Treasury to look at abolishing standing charges on gas bills, which are now expected to disappear.

Who pays: banks, online sellers and drinkers

Healey cannot raise income tax, national insurance or VAT rates without breaking manifesto commitments, and he has promised to stick to Rachel Reeves's fiscal rules and not borrow for day-to-day spending. That leaves the revenue side looking narrow:

• •A levy on banks is expected to be the budget's main revenue-raising measure; HSBC revealed on Tuesday that its quarterly profits had risen 32% to about £7.2bn.
• •One option is reversing Jeremy Hunt's cut of the bank surcharge - a supplement to corporation tax - from 8% to 3% before the last election, which would raise more than £2bn a year.
• •Online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay could be forced to collect VAT on behalf of large-scale UK and overseas sellers, raising up to an extra £1bn.
• •Alcohol duty is likely to rise in line with RPI inflation, taking the tax on a pint from 50p to 52p.

Former Burnham adviser Andy Haldane urged Healey to "level the playing field" between online marketplaces and physical stores. The online-seller money could in turn fund a business-rates cut for small high-street shops, possibly raising the threshold at which they start paying from £12,000 to £18,000.

What stays frozen or off the table

Several taxes look unlikely to move:

• •Fuel duty: the freeze runs to the end of the year, with rises of 3p a litre due in January and 2p in March, but Healey is expected to continue the freeze. An extra year could cost up to £2.7bn, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, or another £4bn to 2029-30.
• •Mansion tax: Treasury officials have played down significant changes to the charge, worth up to £7,500 a year on properties valued above £2m from April 2028. Lowering the threshold to £1.5m was considered, but London MPs believe Healey has ruled it out.
• •Capital gains tax: Healey has rejected calls by senior Labour MPs to raise it to income-tax levels; Jim O'Neill pushed back against equalising the rates, saying it would harm the incentives for wealth creators.
• •Inheritance tax: Kemi Badenoch has proposed raising the tax-free threshold from £325,000 to £500,000 and excluding family homes, but Labour is not expected to put forward changes of its own.
• •Golden visas: Healey has scrapped plans for a new visa route aimed at wealthy people from overseas that the Treasury explored earlier in the year.

Defence gap and devolution funding

Healey aims to plug a £4.7bn gap in the defence investment plan inherited from Keir Starmer, mainly through cuts to other departmental budgets. A roadmap showing how the 3%-of-GDP defence spending target will be hit by 2030 will not come until next year's spending review.

Local leaders are in line for more money: a £150m funding boost for mayoralties and local authorities to scale up for devolved work, a £1.5bn borrowing facility, and an initial £285m "good growth" funding allocation next year for local priorities such as housing, transport links or high street regeneration.