There were no tax changes announced in the Spring Statement.

The Office for Budget Responsibility has upgraded its growth forecasts for next year onwards, but cut this year’s from 2% to 1%.

There’s very little headroom in the government’s plans, so if things don’t go to plan, there could be tax threats in the autumn Budget. Last year a third of tax collected by HMRC was income tax. The big hitters are income tax, National Insurance and VAT.

The economic forecasts made for less grim reading than expected, after Rachel Reeves introduced a surprise twist in the tale. The forecast for growth has been cut for this year, but it has been hiked for every other year of the forecast. Along with the £500 boost to real incomes, this was welcome good news for the government to be able to share.

The spending cuts have kept Reeves the right side of her fiscal rules. However, there’s not a vast amount of space in the budget, so if we don’t get the growth the government is hoping for, there could be tax rises lurking in the autumn Budget.

The election pledges painted Labour into a bit of a corner, because it promised not to raise any of the big three revenue raisers: income tax, national insurance or VAT. If the party sticks with these pledges, it’s going to need to make a myriad of changes to other taxes – and even consider a new kind of tax – to try to close the gap.

So far, the government has focused on changes to those things it made no promises on. Changes to inheritance tax made waves.  Likewise, it added yet another blow for investors with a hike in the capital gains tax rate. And it hiked the stamp duty surcharge for second and subsequent properties. But these are far from being massive revenue raisers for the government, so while it will boost the tax take, it’s a drop in the ocean compared to what a small change to one of the big hitters could achieve.

If the government tried to do more of the same in the next Budget, it could end up actually receiving less money. Once capital gains tax gets high enough, for example, people tend to hoard assets, so there are fewer gains realised and less tax raised. The threshold has been crushed to a fraction of its former level and the rates on stocks and shares hiked far enough to suggest there’s little more the government can do on this front.

There’s every chance we will see a further freezing of the income tax thresholds. However, although that will make a significant difference eventually, given that the rates are already frozen until 2028, the government wouldn’t see a boost in the tax take from further freezes for years. If it needs help to make the sums add up in the interim, then a slow and steady stealth tax wouldn’t be enough on its own.

The government could consider tweaks to some of the big hitters to raise the tax take while being able to say it hasn’t raised the tax. VAT is enormously complex, so it could introduce a reform that generated more income without raising the overall rate. It will be wary, however, of making changes that generate the kind of backlash we got when George Osborne tried to introduce the pasty tax.

It also has the option of u-turning on its election promises. This will have an enormous impact politically, but it may decide it has no other choice – and that the political damage done from a myriad of unpopular choices could be worse than a swift rise in income tax, National Insurance or VAT.

The debate has already started on whether there might be a new kind of tax altogether, to boost the tax take without breaking any promises. If the government wanted to stick with a promise of no more taxes for working people, it might focus on taxing wealth, which would raise all kinds of worries among savers and investors. The government would need to carefully consider the implications of any tax it was considering. You only have to look at the windows in older properties around the country that were bricked up in the wake of the window tax to see not all taxes work out the way governments expect.

You can’t be expected to accurately predict the future of tax, so the priority will be to take advantage of the tax-efficient opportunities available to you right now. There is time ahead of the end of the tax year to use ISA allowances – including stocks and shares, cash ISAs, Junior ISAs for qualifying children and possibly Lifetime ISAs. The other side of the tax deadline, there’s a fresh new year’s worth of allowances to capitalise on. 

You don’t need to worry yourself into knee-jerk reactions. However, there are plenty of no-regrets moves you can make today to protect you from the threat of tax tomorrow.