United States briefings

Salons & barbers

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All owner-operated businesses

All owner-operated businesses · 2026-08-20

Florida's floor hits $15 on 30 September. The dollar is not your problem, the ladder above it is

On 30 September 2026 the Florida minimum wage goes from $14.00 to $15.00 an hour, and the cash wage for tipped staff goes from $10.98 to $11.98. That is the last of the six annual dollar steps Florida voters approved in 2020. If you have five full-time people on the floor, the step itself costs you about $11,200 a year including your payroll taxes. But almost nobody is hurt by the dollar. They are hurt by what it does to everyone you pay between $15 and $18, which is a much bigger number and the one nobody has budgeted for.

All owner-operated businesses · 2026-08-15

Health cover has a cliff in it again, and one strong December can push you over

If you buy your own cover, the premium rise is the small half of this story. The big half is a line at 400% of the poverty line that you either stay under or do not, with nothing in between, and a good final quarter can put you over it without you noticing until April. Here is where the line sits, what it is worth in dollars, and which levers move it without costing you at sale.

All owner-operated businesses · 2026-08-08

The Visa and Mastercard settlement sends you no money. It sorts your customers into three price tiers instead

If you took a Visa or Mastercard payment in the US at any point since December 2020, you are in this settlement. You did not sign up for it, you are not allowed to leave it, and it will not send you a dollar. What it will do is put a hard ceiling on the cheapest cards in your customers' wallets, leave the expensive ones exactly where they are, and give you the right to treat the two differently. The one date on it that belongs to you is 14 September 2026.

Salons & barbers · 2026-08-02

"No tax on tips" gives your salon nothing. Used properly it is still the cheapest raise you will ever hand out.

If you run a salon or barbershop with tipped staff, 2026 is the first year the IRS makes you report tips a new way, and the year is already seven months old. The honest position on money: this cuts nothing off your tax bill, adds a little admin, and hands you one genuinely valuable thing. Your team can get a federal tax break on their tips that costs you absolutely nothing, but only if your card machine is set up right and somebody tells them about a form.

Clinics & med-spas · 2026-07-28

There is no national med spa law. Indiana wrote one, and it starts charging you before the register even opens.

Straight answer first: there is no federal med spa law in the United States, so the rules that decide who has to stand in your treatment room, where you are allowed to inject, and what you can put in a syringe are set by your state. Indiana just became the first state with a dedicated med spa register. Two of its three real costs already applied from 1 July 2026, before the register itself exists, and one of them can quietly delete a revenue line you are running this month.

Cafes & coffee shops · 2026-07-25

Tipped wage rules moved again in 2026. Which of the three systems you pay under decides your margin.

If you employ tipped staff, your labour cost in 2026 depends less on the headline minimum wage than on one thing: how much of your wage bill your customers' tips are still allowed to cover. That allowance is called the tip credit, and in a growing number of places it is shrinking on a published timetable. Here is how to tell which of the three systems you pay under, what the 2026 changes cost on real hours, and why a buyer can now read your wage bill years into the future.

All owner-operated businesses · 2026-07-21

The 20% deduction you were about to lose is now permanent. Here is what it actually saves you

If you run your business as a sole proprietor, partnership, LLC or S-corp, you have been getting a quiet 20% discount on your business profit before tax since 2018. It was booked to disappear at the end of 2025. It did not. The 2025 tax law made it permanent, so you keep it in 2026 and beyond. Here is the plain-English version: what the deduction is, what it actually saves you on real numbers, whether you get the full 20%, and the one thing it does not do that owners keep getting wrong.

All owner-operated businesses · 2026-07-16

You can write off 100% of new equipment again, permanently. The trap is what it does the day you sell

Good tax news for once: buy a new espresso machine, a rack of gym kit, salon stations or a treatment laser, and you can now knock 100% of the cost off this year's taxable profit, instead of dribbling it out over five or seven years. That is real cash left in the business at tax time. Here is exactly how it works in 2026, what it is worth on a real purchase, and the one thing that turns it from a smart move into an expensive mistake if you might sell.

Salons & barbers · 2026-07-10

The new FICA tip credit just changed the booth-rental-versus-employee math for US salons

For years the tax math pushed salon owners one way: rent out the chairs, put stylists on a 1099, and dodge the employer payroll tax. A federal law signed on 4 July 2025 quietly changed one side of that ledger. If your stylists are employees, you can now claim a federal tax credit on the payroll tax you pay on their tips, a credit salons never had before. Here is what it does to your take-home profit first, then to the booth-rental decision, and to what your salon is worth when you sell.