Sometimes you can see the future, but not quite touch it. That’s where we are on austerity. The prime minister and chancellor have promised to end it; Labour opposes it. But as they talk about possible Brexit deals, an actual last year of post-crisis austerity is getting under way – as millions of families will find as the new tax year kicks in this week.

As well as marking the last year of George Osborne’s programme of public spending cuts, the new tax year means the fourth and final year of the benefits freeze – affecting around 10 million households. This will cost poorer couples with children an average of £400 next year, cutting spending by £1.8bn overall – rising to £900 a year and £4.7bn once the full four-year freeze is taken into account.

More positively, the million or so households on universal credit, will from tomorrow gain as much as £630 a year as a result of the increases to work allowances that the Resolution Foundation, and this newspaper, have long called for. But with relatively few people as yet on universal credit, it will be the wider benefit cuts that dominate – delivering another living-standards blow to low-income families.

The post-crisis habit of cutting income taxes along with benefits is also being repeated this year. Cuts introduced since 2010 – to income tax, corporation tax and fuel duty – are expected to cost the government around £40bn this year, putting more pressure on public services and social security.

This year’s income tax cuts are bumper ones for higher earners. If you earn £30,000 you’ll be £73 better off, but make that £327 for those of you on £60,000 – over four times as much. Our lowest 40% of earners will gain precisely zero. In fact, over a third of the £2.8bn package of tax cuts this year will go the richest tenth of households alone.

Added together, the new tax and benefit changes for the year mean an average £280 income boost for the richest fifth of households, but a £100 reduction for the poorest fifth.

These cuts to public services, social security and taxes do genuinely represent the end of an era, though – the final year of the austerity plan drawn up by David Cameron and George Osborne. But this era has a painful legacy. Prisons and local government services will remain severely stretched for years. Social security retrenchment will continue for new claims well into the 2020s. This risks pushing even more children below the poverty line, and child poverty rising to record levels. But a new era is coming – this autumn’s spending review will see spending rise not fall, while Labour and Tory leadership contenders are competing on extra welfare spending, not further cuts. It won’t be ushered in by Theresa May despite her initial focus on the “burning injustices” facing Britain. Brexit put paid to that.

And while the next prime minister or government may well also be defined by their Brexit travails, they will face other questions that can’t be delayed or put off.

If the deficit underpinned the austerity era, what will frame our post-austerity economic policy? If the state is to shrink no further, where and how should it be extended? And, crucially, how should this be paid for in an era when wealth has risen but wages have not? An era is coming to a close, but tough choices aren’t.

Torsten Bell is director of the Resolution Foundation