There's a lot to digest from Chancellor John Healey's first Budget, delivered today, Wednesday 28 October 2026, and this blog from Sysum Howard Duggan rounds up the key points affecting you and your business.
Business rates – The Small Business Rate Relief threshold has risen from £12,000 to £18,000 of rateable value, taking an estimated 70,000 more businesses out of paying business rates altogether, meaning roughly half of all shops, restaurants and gyms in England will now pay nothing at all (LBC). Pubs, clubs and live music venues have also been promised a further 20% cut to their business rates (City AM).
Capital Gains Tax on selling your business – Business Asset Disposal Relief, the lower rate of Capital Gains Tax available when you sell all or part of a qualifying business, now applies to only the first £500,000 of gains, down from £1m (AOL). The Treasury says three in four claimants won't be affected, but if an exit, a partial sale or a succession plan is anywhere on your horizon, even a loose one, the tax bill on that sale could now be materially higher than you'd budgeted for. We'd rather you found that out from us now than from your solicitor during a sale.
Corporation Tax and capital allowances – The headline rate hasn't moved, and full expensing on qualifying capital expenditure continues. For assets outside full expensing, the main rate first-year capital allowance rises from 40% to 50%, while the ongoing writing down allowance for those assets falls from 14% to 12% (AOL). In plain terms, you get your relief sooner, but less of it gradually over future years, so timing capital spending well still matters.
National Minimum Wage – The National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage are both rising by 3.9%, affecting an estimated 2.3 million workers across the UK (PwC). It's the fourth consecutive above-inflation increase and, for most of our clients' payroll, is already the single biggest cost on the P&L. So, it's worth modelling what this does to your staffing costs now rather than discovering it at year-end.
Property and savings income – If you take income from buy-to-let, or hold savings outside a pension or ISA, the rate of tax on that income rises by a further two percentage points from April 2027 (AOL). This sits on top of frozen income tax thresholds that already pull more income into higher bands each year, and it's worth a look if you extract value through a mix of salary, dividends and property income.
Trading allowance – The trading allowance, the amount you can earn from a new or side venture before it's taxed, has been tripled from £1,000 to £3,000 (LBC), a welcome bit of breathing room if you're testing a new product or service alongside your main business.
Bank surcharge – The Bank Surcharge rises by 3% from January, lasting 15 months, to help fund energy bill support for households (PwC).
Business rates devolution – All business rates revenue will be retained locally by 2030, with 20% going to regional mayors from 2027, alongside a new growth fund and £1.5bn in loans for mayors to invest in their areas (LBC).
Energy and household support – Standing charges on gas bills will be scrapped from 2027, or as soon as possible after, and VAT has already come off electricity bills, together with a new scheme cutting a quarter off electricity bills for around 10,000 higher energy-use firms (MoneyWeek; AOL).
And finally… The planned cut to the cash ISA allowance, from £20,000 to £12,000, has been dropped, so it stays at £20,000, and a new 'Starter ISA' has been announced for younger savers (MoneyWeek). The fuel duty cut has also been extended, this time until July 2027 (ITV News).
Taken together, the Government is careful to say this Budget doesn't raise taxes on 'working people', and on Income Tax, employee National Insurance and VAT rates, that's technically true. For SME owners, though, the real pressure points sit elsewhere. There's now a tighter capital gains position if you sell, a fourth consecutive wage rise to absorb and personal tax thresholds that keep quietly doing the work. None of these show up the way a headline tax rise would, which is why they're easy to miss until they land on your tax return or your payroll run.
If any of the measures announced in today's Budget touch your plans, whether that's a possible sale, a bigger wage bill to budget for, or just making sense of what's changed, get in touch and we'll help you work through what it actually means for your numbers. Our tax consultancy team can review your position on Business Asset Disposal Relief and personal income structuring, and our financial forecasting and business planning services can help you model what rising wage costs mean for your margins before they catch you out. Get in touch to talk it through.