All owner-operated businesses in United States

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.