HGP Nightly News – Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh says Budget 2026 will lift the monthly income tax threshold to $140,000, up from $130,000 last year, a move he argues is aimed at putting more money into workers’ pockets as the government rolls out its new term agenda.
Based on the government’s own framing, the increase is expected to remove about 5,000 people from the tax net and inject more than $2 billion in additional disposable income into households. Still, for many workers who fall just above the threshold, the headline shift translates into a relatively modest change in take-home pay: the $10,000 adjustment works out to roughly $2,500 more per month per person in tax relief.
The threshold was last raised in Budget 2025, when the government moved it to $130,000 and said that change delivered $18 billion in disposable income while taking around 60,000 persons out of the tax net. The 2026 adjustment, while smaller, continues that same policy direction of easing the PAYE burden incrementally.
The announcement also lands in the middle of a wider debate over what “enough” looks like. In the lead-up to the 2026 budget, the Private Sector Commission publicly signalled it was pushing for a higher threshold of $160,000 per month, arguing that workers need greater breathing room amid cost-of-living pressures.
And on the campaign trail last year, tax relief featured prominently across the political divide. APNU, for instance, campaigned on a far more dramatic proposal, promising to raise the threshold to $400,000 monthly, a figure that now sharpens the contrast between major-party pledges and the government’s more incremental approach.
For now, the government’s position is that the latest increase is another step in a steady tax-relief track, even as critics and stakeholders continue to press the question many workers will be asking this week: is a $10,000 threshold bump, and about $2,500 more a month, enough to meaningfully change life for ordinary households?
