Rubbish Check
Daily Mail Money · 28 October 2026
source“‘Banks braced for Budget battering – as unions claim whopping 35% windfall tax would raise £60bn’”
R5/ 10
Selective
Rubbish Rating — 1 = base fact, 10 = pure rubbish
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In short
Rubbish Talk rates the Daily Mail's headline pairing "Budget battering" with a "35% windfall tax" raising "£60bn" a 5/10 because the £60bn figure is a four-year cumulative TUC estimate for a tax rate nobody expects, while the article's own reporting says the real policy under consideration is a rise to 8%, worth roughly £2bn a year.
The Verdict
Selective. The Mail correctly attributes the 35%/£60bn figure to "unions claim," so it isn't fabricated, but the headline drops the "over four years" qualifier the article itself includes, and it foregrounds the TUC's most extreme hypothetical rather than the policy the piece says Healey is actually weighing. That's cherry-picking the scariest number for the headline while burying the real one.
What actually happened
HSBC reported bumper third-quarter profits the day before the Budget, reigniting union calls for a bank windfall tax. The TUC laid out a menu of options: an 8% surcharge raising roughly £2bn a year, and a maximalist 35% surcharge, matching the old energy windfall levy, raising £60bn cumulatively over four years. Chancellor John Healey was reported to be considering raising the existing 3% bank surcharge to as high as 8%, not 35%.
Key facts
- The TUC claimed hiking the levy to 8 per cent would raise more than £2billion a year, but added that increasing it to 35 per cent would deliver a whopping £15billion a year, which would amount to a £60billion windfall over four years, per the article.
- Policy actually being reported as likely: The Chancellor is expected to increase the bank surcharge from 3 per cent to as high as 8 per cent, not to 35%.
- Independent corroboration: the TUC's own campaign materials confirm "£60bn could be raised over four years by increasing the bank surcharge to 35%," with a 16% rate pegged at £24bn over four years.
- HSBC context the headline omits: HSBC reported a 32 per cent jump in third quarter profits to £7.2billion, but less than a fifth of it came from HSBC's UK operations, and HSBC shares fell more than 5 per cent on Tuesday as the results disappointed investors.
- Tax burden counterpoint buried in the piece: UK banks are currently taxed at a rate of 46.5 per cent once employment levies and VAT are taken into account, compared with 39.1 per cent in Frankfurt and 27.9 per cent in New York.
What to watch for
- Watch what rate Healey actually announces: if it lands at 8%, as the article suggests, coverage built around "£60bn" will have been built on a scenario that never happened.
- Watch whether follow-up stories keep flagging "over four years" for the £60bn figure or let it calcify into an annual number.
- Watch bank share moves and any UK headquarters relocation chatter as a tell for how markets price the actual (not maximalist) tax outcome.
About this scoreThe R-Score is Rubbish Talk's editorial opinion on how far a headline's framing sits from what the underlying facts support. It is a judgement about presentation and emphasis, not an allegation that any outlet has acted dishonestly. Every figure we rely on is linked under Receipts so you can check it yourself.
