'You know from the outset you are going to take a kicking – the only question is how hard and painful it will be'

With the budget looming next week the focus on Westminster is intense.

The big reveal will be whether what is now being said is for real, or whether the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and other members of the cabinet are playing a bad cop, bad cop act. That game plan is around making the budget sound truly awful, when it might be not quite as bad as is being flagged up now.

If that is the case ministers have a useful prop to claim a change of direction. Inflation dropped unexpectedly, which should ease interest rates and improve economic growth. There is a sense the UK economy is improving slowly.

Waiting in the wings however are other statistics around government borrowing hitting new highs. The government has made much of the black hole in spending plans left by the Conservatives. They used this to justify cutting winter fuel payments for pensioners. This was dubbed Robin Hood in reverse – taking money from pensioners to indirectly give it to train drivers earning £85,000 a year.

There is no question the government's pay increase generosity towards the public sector has made its budgetary black hole deeper. Come budget day, economists will be looking beyond higher taxes to see where cuts in big ticket spending will emerge.

Only if there are checks and balances in that process will the government be able to claim it is demonstrating the 'fiscal prudence' Rachel Reeves is capable of delivering.

The budget process will be akin to a tough game of football or rugby, where you know from the outset you are going to take a kicking – the only question being how hard and painful it will be. Taxes will rise; fuel duty will almost certainly be at least partially unfrozen using a green screen to hide a tax grab. For farmers a key question around this will be what might happen to red diesel rebates, which are already a lot less attractive in real terms than a few years ago. Concerns around this have been raised by the farming lobby, but my hunch is that the principle will be left alone, although the tax rate before the rebate may be allowed to rise with any overall increase in fuel duty.

When it comes to agriculture this will be just the warm up act for the main show. We know already that tax thresholds – the point where taxes are levied – will again not rise to reflect inflation. Like imposing higher national insurance rates on employers this is clumsy dancing on the head of a pin around Labour's manifesto promise not to increase taxes for working people.

It needs to be honest and admit that commitment cannot be fully met, rather than squirming around with half truths no-one believes. Capital gains tax is a likely target for an increase. But because many paying this use good accountants and mechanisms to limit their tax liabilities the tax take from any change is likely to be less that forecast.

Inheritance tax is the big area where inflation and frozen thresholds offer real terms financial delivery potential for the Treasury. This is the embodiment of the old saying about the certainty of death and taxes. There is real concern for the first time in many years that agricultural property relief could become a target for change.

The government claim would be that this is targeting the rich using farm land as a tax loophole, but in reality this would affect family farms and the availability and viability of the tenancy system in the DNA and foundations of UK agriculture. The government may wrap anything it does in a cloak of claims about fairness, but in reality no matter how it is wrapped in shiny paper this would be a body blow to agriculture.

It would make the problem of generational transfer – getting young people into agriculture – worse than it already is. It would leave family farm businesses saddled with debt to pay the tax. It would be a bad decision to avoid targeting with new rules those using farm land as a loophole to avoid tax when they have no real links to practical farming.

If this can be avoided in the budget it would be an example of pain being talked up to hide true intentions – but whatever next week brings the threat to agricultural property relief is not likely to be permanently put to bed.