What today’s changes mean for your business.

Global

3 briefing(s)

United Kingdom

21 briefing(s)

United States

17 briefing(s)

Canada

10 briefing(s)

Ireland

7 briefing(s)

Australia

15 briefing(s)

New Zealand

8 briefing(s)

Australia · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-10-05

A full point on your loans since February. The RBA also told you something more useful than the rate

The cash rate is now 4.60%. It started the year at 3.60%, so if your business loan or overdraft is variable and your lender has passed every rise on, you are paying about $10 a year more interest for every $1,000 you owe than you were in January. On $240,000 of debt that is $2,400 a year, all of it straight off your profit. That is the bad news, and it is smaller than it sounds. The useful news is one line in the Reserve Bank's own statement, which says businesses are already raising their prices or getting ready to. If you have been putting off yours, you just ran out of reasons.

United Kingdom · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-10-02

Company car or staff health cover? In 2027 you pay two years of National Insurance on them in one

If your company gives anyone a car, a van, free fuel or private medical cover, all of it moves onto the payroll from 6 April 2027. The tax and the employer National Insurance will be worked out and paid every pay day, not a year later on a P11D form. Nothing about the rate changes. The timing does, and HMRC itself warns about the side effect: in the 2027/28 tax year you pay last year's Class 1A in one July lump and start paying this year's every month. One year, two years of the bill. The rest of this page puts that on real numbers, then covers the bit owners tend to miss, which is what it does to your own payslip and to the perks your staff never knew were taxed.

United Kingdom · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-09-27

She owned half the company. One line on a 2015 form said her shares had no vote, and it cost her £46,260 when she sold

No. If your shares carry no vote at a general meeting, the sale of them does not get Business Asset Disposal Relief, however much of the company you own. A tax tribunal said so again on 9 September 2026, and the case is worth five minutes of your time because of how ordinary it is. Two people ran a small firm. One of them held half the shares. A form filed at Companies House in 2015 described her shares as having "no voting rights". She says nobody meant that. It did not matter. When she sold, HMRC took the relief away and she paid £46,260 more tax. At today's rates the same mistake would still cost her about £27,750.

United States · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-09-26

Borrowing to buy or expand a small-town business? From 1 October the SBA fee can be zero

If your salon, cafe, clinic or gym sits in a rural area and you are about to borrow through an SBA 7(a) loan, the upfront guaranty fee on that loan drops to zero for any loan approved on or after 1 October 2026, as long as the loan is $700,000 or less. On a $400,000 loan that is $9,000 you no longer pay. On $700,000 it is $15,750. If you are in a town or city, nothing has changed for you, and the page below says so plainly. The part everyone should read is the line at $700,000, because one dollar over it puts the whole fee back.

Australia · Salons & barbers · 2026-09-25

Taking on an apprentice in January? Start them in December instead

If you were planning to take on a hairdressing, barbering or beauty apprentice in January, start them before 1 January 2027 instead. The $2,500 Priority Hiring Incentive is not being cut. What changes on New Year's Day is the list that decides whether your trade qualifies for it at all, and the new list has not been published. An apprentice who starts in 2026 is paid for under the 2026 rules. One who starts on 4 January gets whatever the new list says.

United States · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-09-24

Your 2025 tariffs are being paid back with interest. How your goods came in decides if you see any of it

Yes, the emergency tariffs you paid in 2025 are coming back, with interest, and US Customs has been sending the money out since April. The catch is that it only goes to the importer of record on each shipment, and on most shipments there is a clock running. So the useful question is not "am I owed a refund" but "where is mine sitting". If a courier brought your goods in, the answer may be a portal you have not logged into. If you used a customs broker, it is a list of dates you need this week. If you bought from a US distributor, the refund is not yours at all, and the money you can still get back is in your supplier invoices.

New Zealand · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-09-23

Your ACC levy went up about 4.5%. The payment plan attached to it stopped being free

Yes, it went up. The average ACC Work levy rose from $0.66 to $0.69 for every $100 of liable payroll on 1 April 2026, which is about 4.5 percent, and it is already set to reach $0.72 the year after. On a $250,000 payroll that is roughly $75 more a year. That is not the reason to read this. The reason is the other change on the same invoice: the instalment plan you have been using to spread the payment stopped being free, and if you do nothing about it, it renews itself at the new price.

United States · Clinics & med-spas · 2026-09-22

The 100 percent drug tariff starts on 29 September. Most of what you inject is not in it

If you have seen "100 percent tariff on drugs from 29 September" and wondered what it does to your toxin cost, the honest answer is: probably much less than the headline, and possibly nothing. The rate is not one number. It runs 0, 15, 20 or 100 percent depending on who made the product and where. AbbVie, which owns Botox Cosmetic and Juvederm, is one of thirteen companies the order names as already holding an agreement with Washington, and for that group the order sets the rate at zero until January 2029. Fillers are not drugs at all, so this measure does not reach them, though a separate tariff already has. Below is how to work out your own number in about ten minutes, and the invoice line you should refuse to pay.

United Kingdom · Salons & barbers · 2026-09-20

Government cut VAT on electricity for households. Read note 5 and it covers small shops too

Short answer: most business electricity carries 20% VAT, but if your premises uses no more than 33 kilowatt hours a day HMRC treats the supply as domestic, which means 5% today and 0% from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027 in England, Wales and Scotland. Nobody sends you a letter about this. It is a number on your own bill, and plenty of small shops are on the wrong side of it.

United States · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-09-19

The Fed just raised rates for the first time since 2023. Your SBA loan repriced the next morning

If you are asking what SBA loan rates are right now: the prime rate has been 7.00% since Thursday 17 September 2026, so the most a lender can charge on a variable 7(a) loan is 10.00% above $350,000, 11.50% from $250,001 to $350,000, 13.00% from $50,001 to $250,000 and 13.50% at $50,000 or less. Every one of those is a quarter point higher than it was on Wednesday, because the Federal Reserve raised rates for the first time in more than three years. On its own the quarter point is small money, and I will show you exactly how small. The reason to keep reading is what the Fed said about the next one, and what that does to the price a buyer can pay for your business.

Australia · Cafes & coffee shops · 2026-09-18

Your ATO debt just became the most expensive money in your business

No. Interest the ATO charges you on an unpaid tax bill stopped being tax deductible for anything incurred on or after 1 July 2025, and the 2025-26 return on your accountant's desk right now is the first one where that shows up. Nothing about your payment plan changed. What changed is that the money you borrow from the ATO by not paying now costs you roughly a third more after tax than it did, which for a lot of owners makes it dearer than the bank. Here is the arithmetic on a real BAS debt, then the three ways out, cheapest first.

Global · Cafes & coffee shops · 2026-09-17

Coffee went into surplus for the first time in five years. It is worth half a cent a cup to you

Short answer, because it is the question everyone in the trade is being asked right now: the world coffee price averaged 287.29 US cents a pound in August 2026, which is 3.3% below where it was a year earlier. That is the whole dividend from a record Brazilian crop and the first global surplus in five years, and in a double shot it comes to about half a cent. The number worth your attention sits three pages further into the same report, and it is not a price at all.

Canada · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-09-15

Your 2027 EI bill is set. For your staff it is pennies, and your own line may not belong there at all

Next year's Employment Insurance numbers landed on 14 September, and the headline is the least useful part of them. The rate moved a single cent. The earnings ceiling moved $1,900. For a small team that adds up to roughly the price of one decent dinner across the whole year. The line genuinely worth five minutes is the one with your own name on it, because if you control more than 40 percent of the voting shares of your own company, the Act says that employment was never insurable, and the premiums coming off it are buying you nothing at all.

United States · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-09-13

The new car loan deduction is settled the day you sign, and a work vehicle is exactly what fails it

If you are buying a vehicle on finance this year, one decision made before you sign is worth a few hundred dollars a year to you, and almost nobody is told about it in the showroom. The new car loan interest deduction only works if you expected the vehicle to be mostly for personal use. The more the vehicle earns you money, the less likely it is to qualify. The IRS finalised that rule on 8 September, and it locks in on the day the loan is signed.

Canada · Salons & barbers · 2026-09-12

A 50% surtax landed on US-made nail and make-up products on 8 September. Your invoice will not mention it

Your product bills are going up and nothing on them will say why. Since 8 September, bringing US-made nail products, lip and eye make-up and perfume into Canada costs an extra 50% at the border. Shampoo is not on the list. Perm solution is not on the list. It has nothing to do with whose logo is on the bottle and everything to do with where the bottle was made, which means the answer is printed in small type on the back label. This is the rare cost line you can still do something about this month, because unlike rent and wages you can change a supplier in about a week.

United Kingdom · Salons & barbers · 2026-09-11

April 2027 wages get set on 28 October. The Low Pay Commission already published its number

Your biggest cost line for next year already has a number attached to it, and almost nobody has looked it up. The Low Pay Commission thinks the National Living Wage will need to be around £13.18 an hour in April 2027, up from £12.71 now. On one full-time person that is roughly £1,080 a year off your profit, before you serve a single extra client. You get seven months of warning, which is more than any other cost gives you.

Global · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-09-10

Prices rose 4.1%. Energy rose 11.6%. Guess which one your price list followed

Two numbers came out of the same OECD release on 8 September. Consumer prices across the OECD are up 4.1% on the year. Energy is up 11.6%. If you set your prices once a year against the inflation figure on the news, you have been recovering roughly a third of what your electricity actually did, and the difference has been coming straight off your profit since April.

United States · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-09-09

Before you sign the 2027 health renewal, look at the number the IRS moved in July

Insurers have asked state regulators for a median 14% increase on small group health plans in 2027. If you cover your staff, that is the number heading for your renewal letter this autumn. The more useful number is 10.22%, which the IRS published on 27 July and almost nobody has explained to a small employer, because it quietly changes what your cheapest alternative costs and who it hurts.

Australia · Salons & barbers · 2026-09-08

The non-compete in your stylists' contracts is being banned. The clause that protects your client list is not

On 7 September the government released draft legislation that would ban the non-compete clause in your staff contracts for anyone earning under $190,100 a year. In a salon that is everyone. The useful part is not the ban itself, it is what the ban leaves standing, because that is where whatever protection you actually have will have to live from now on.

Ireland · Cafes & coffee shops · 2026-09-07

Your electricity network charges rise 16.4% on 1 October. Switching supplier will not touch a cent of it

From 1 October the regulated part of your electricity bill changes, and the direction depends entirely on how much power you buy. Households were told to expect about €41 more a year. The regulator's own example of a small business is roughly €314 worse off once every line is netted out, and most of that sits in charges no supplier switch can reduce. Here is where it lands, what it costs on your own kilowatt hours, and the one number on your paperwork that is worth an afternoon.