And there are suggestions the Chancellor may announce further cuts to housing benefit including limiting the payouts to under-25s – forcing many youngsters without jobs to stay at home for longer.
Osborne is due to speak to delegates at today’s Conservative party conference in Birmingham where he will make the announcements.
And he will add that although the rich will have to pay more tax the budget cannot rely only on them.
Osborne is also due to announce a further £10bn worth of cuts to benefits by 2016-17 and there are rumours of imposing a limit on the number of children in each family for whom parents can claim child benefit.
This further saving is on top of the £18bn of welfare cuts Osborne announced in 2010.
He will say it is necessary because the economy’s "healing is taking longer than we hoped, because the damage was greater than we feared".
