What today’s changes mean for your business.

Global

2 briefing(s)

United Kingdom

18 briefing(s)

United States

13 briefing(s)

Canada

9 briefing(s)

Ireland

7 briefing(s)

Australia

12 briefing(s)

New Zealand

7 briefing(s)

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.

United Kingdom · Cafes & coffee shops · 2026-09-06

The part of your card bill nobody can explain rose 25% in real terms, and the fix just slipped to 2029

If you take cards, a slice of every sale leaves the business before you ever see it, and it comes straight off gross profit rather than out of a budget you review once a year. The regulator has just finished nearly four years of investigating the fastest growing part of that slice, and the honest summary is this: nothing was capped, nothing on your statement changes, and the one piece that would let anyone check a card bill line by line was quietly pushed back to 2029 three weeks after it was announced. The money you can actually get back this month comes from a different set of rules that has been sitting there since 2023.

United States · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-09-04

Your salaried manager needs $72,384 on 1 January or they go back on the clock

Two numbers move in California on 1 January 2027. The minimum wage goes from $16.90 to $17.40, which costs you about $1,120 a year for every full-time hourly person once payroll tax is counted. The second number gets much less attention and is where the money usually is: the minimum salary for a manager you treat as exempt from overtime goes to $72,384. Pay a salaried manager less than that on 1 January and they are not exempt any more. They are back on the clock, with daily overtime and meal break penalties attached, whatever their job title says.

Australia · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-09-03

Family trusts get a 30 cent floor in 2028. The draft law out today adds a way around it

If you take your profit out of a family trust, read this one. From 1 July 2028 money that runs through a discretionary trust is taxed at a minimum of 30 cents in the dollar, no matter who you distribute it to. The draft law landed this morning, and tucked inside it is a new option that lets you keep the trust and still avoid the tax. Submissions close on 18 September. Below: whether it hits you at all, what each of your four options costs, and why the sale of your business is the part you can stop worrying about.

United Kingdom · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-09-02

Unfair dismissal drops to six months in January. The date that counts is when the notice ends

Nothing leaves your bank account on 1 January. This change moves something else: how expensive it is to reverse a hiring decision you got wrong. Today a new employee cannot bring an ordinary unfair dismissal claim until they have worked for you for two years. From 1 January 2027 that drops to six months, and the ceiling on what a tribunal can award comes off altogether. So the person you hire this month has a six month window instead of a two year one, and anyone already past six months on your payroll is inside the new rule from the first day of the new year. The date that decides which rule applies is not the day you make the decision. It is the day the employment actually ends.

New Zealand · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-09-01

The fire levy on your business insurance fell by a third on 1 July. Some renewals still went up

Find your last insurance renewal and look for the line called the Fire and Emergency levy. On 1 July the rate on that line dropped by about a third for commercial cover, from 11.95 cents to 7.76 cents for every $100 you insure. That is roughly $42 a year back for every $100,000 of cover, before GST. But the levy did not only get cheaper. It also changed what it is charged on, and for some owners that second change eats the first. This is a fifteen minute check on your renewal paperwork, worth a few hundred dollars a year for a single site and more than a thousand if you run several.

United Kingdom · Cafes & coffee shops · 2026-08-31

The state is about to start auditing your holiday pay, and the meter started running in December

If you pay anyone casual or variable hours, there is a number that should be on their payslip every week, and from 2027 a government agency can come and check whether it was. Holiday pay itself is not changing. What changes is that it stops being something a worker has to sue you for and becomes something the state audits, with a proposed penalty of double whatever you owe. The record-keeping duty behind it quietly started on 6 April this year. Two pieces of good news: the penalty is avoidable in full if you find the problem before they do, and the amount they can reach back for is smaller today than it will ever be again.

Canada · Gyms & studios · 2026-08-30

A 50% surtax lands on US-made gym kit on 8 September. Anything already in transit escapes it

If you were planning to replace a rack, a row of bikes or a set of plates this year, the price of doing it changes at one minute past midnight on 8 September. From that moment Canada charges a 50% surtax on exercise equipment made in the United States. For a gym that is not a small cost line, because equipment is both your product and the thing a buyer prices hardest when you sell. There is one exemption worth real money: anything already on its way to Canada when the surtax starts is not caught. That gives you a few days and about three emails.

Australia · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-08-28

Regulated power prices fell up to 20.9% in July. Most owners will never see a cent of it

Somewhere in your July or August paperwork is the first power bill priced under the new 2026-27 rules, and it is worth two minutes of your attention. The regulated price for a small business fell hard on 1 July, by as much as 20.9% in parts of New South Wales. But that cut only lands automatically on the minority of businesses still on a default plan. If you are on a market contract, which most owners are, nothing in that bill moved unless your retailer chose to move it. And the $150 federal rebate that was quietly padding last year's bills stopped in December. Cheaper year, possibly bigger bill. Here is how to actually collect the cut.

New Zealand · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-08-27

From April 2027 you only manage the risks that could hospitalise someone. That is a harder test, not an easier one

On 1 April 2027 a business with fewer than 20 workers stops having to manage every risk equally and manages its critical risks instead. Less paperwork, genuinely, and a real saving for anyone currently renting a folder full of it. The catch is the test underneath, because it is not the one most owners are using: it asks how badly someone would be hurt if something went wrong, not how likely the thing is to happen. Read it the usual way and you will drop the one risk you were meant to keep.

United States · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-08-27

Under 15 staff and you pay nothing into Maryland's leave fund. The twelve weeks of cover still applies to you

There are two numbers in Maryland's new paid leave law. The one in every headline is 0.9%. The one that decides what it costs you is 15. Below fifteen employees, your business pays none of the contribution, because the statute only makes employers of fifteen or more pay in. You still register, still deduct from your staff, still file every quarter. And the obligation that will actually cost a small owner money, holding a job open for twelve weeks and keeping the health coverage running, has no size threshold anywhere in it.

United Kingdom · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-08-26

Your deadline is not 17 November. It is whatever date your confirmation statement is due

Verifying your identity for Companies House is free and takes about fifteen minutes. Skipping it can end with your company bank account frozen, which is the only reason it is worth your attention today. The trap is the date. Almost every article points at 17 November 2026, the end of the twelve month transition. Your actual deadline is your own confirmation statement date, and for most companies that falls earlier. Companies House will not accept the statement until every director has verified, so one slow co-director stops the whole filing.

Ireland · Cafes & coffee shops · 2026-08-26

Your coffee gets a compliance file on 30 December. The paperwork is not the part that costs you

Short version. On 30 December 2026 the EU deforestation rules switch on for coffee, and if you buy roasted coffee from an Irish or European roaster, you are not the one filing anything. Your roaster is. What reaches you is the price of the bag, one record-keeping habit if you sell beans over the counter, and a decision about origins that somebody else may end up making for you.

Canada · All owner-operated businesses · 2026-08-25

From 1 October your bookkeeper adds 7% PST, and you cannot claim it back

Open the folder where your bookkeeping invoices live. Whatever the last one said, the next one after 1 October 2026 says the same number plus 7%. British Columbia is putting provincial sales tax on accounting and bookkeeping that day, and the part that matters is not the rate. It is that PST has no equivalent of the GST refund you are used to, so this one stays on your profit line for good. There is also a legal way to keep two months of it off your bill, and that door shuts on 30 September.