The Autumn Budget 2026
What it means for owner-managed businesses
Having spent the evening in the Treasury documents rather than the commentary, our honest reading is that for most owner-managed businesses this was close to a non-budget.
That’s not a complaint. A Budget that leaves your headline rates alone is a Budget you can plan around. But it does mean the useful work this week is narrower than the coverage suggests.
What didn’t move
Corporation tax stays at 25%, with the small profits rate at 19%. VAT is unchanged, and so is the £90,000 registration threshold. Employer National Insurance stays at 15% with the Employment Allowance at £10,500. Dividend tax is unchanged. The income tax thresholds remain frozen until April 2031, which was already law.
If you run a limited company and take a salary and dividends, your 2027-28 position looks a great deal like your 2026-27 one.
The one number you can plan for
The National Living Wage goes to £13.21 an hour on 1 April 2027, up 3.9%. The 18 to 20 rate goes to £11.27 and the 16 to 17 rate to £8.31. For a full-time worker on the main rate that is roughly £910 a year in gross pay, before employer National Insurance and pension on top.
That’s the most predictable cost increase in your 2027 budget and the only one you can model exactly today. Model it person by person with the on-costs, rather than adding a percentage at the end. The two give different answers and the second one is always the optimistic one.
It’s worth being specific about why the percentage approach misleads. A blanket uplift applied to a total payroll figure spreads the increase evenly across everybody. The actual increase lands only on the people at or near the rate and it drags the people just above them too because the differential you were paying your supervisors shrinks unless you move them as well. Businesses that model this properly in November usually find the number is larger than the one they had assumed and they still have four months to do something about it.
The question about hospitality
The question we’ve been asked most since yesterday is whether this actually helps hospitality, which has had a hard few years.
The rates side is real. Qualifying retail, hospitality and leisure properties in England get lower multipliers, 44.7p standard and 39.7p small business against 49.7p and 44.7p elsewhere. Small Business Rates Relief limits rise, so full relief runs to a rateable value of £18,000 instead of £12,000 and tapered relief to £21,000. Bill increases are capped at CPI for 2027-28 and 2028-29. Pubs, social clubs and most live music venues get 35% off, up from 15%, though restaurants are not in that one.
Set against it: hospitality employs more people at or near the National Living Wage than almost any other sector, and that bill rises 3.9% on the same day the rates changes land.
So the honest answer is that it depends on your ratio of property cost to payroll cost and most operators won’t know which way it falls until they’ve done the sum. If your rates saving is four figures and your wage bill rises five, the help is real and it’s not enough. That calculation takes an afternoon and it’s worth doing before you plan next year.
Three things worth doing this week
One. Model the April wage increase properly. Person by person, with employer National Insurance and pension on top, not as a percentage uplift at the end of the sheet.
Two. If you occupy premises, work out your 2027-28 rates bill under the new multipliers and reliefs, then set it against that wage number. The net position is the one that matters and it is not the one in the headlines.
Three. If selling the business is anywhere in your three-year thinking, put the capital gains reliefs on the agenda with your tax adviser before April. They moved in both directions and it’s not a calculation to do on the back of a news story.
Where we stop
On capital gains, the Budget moved two things at once. The Business Asset Disposal Relief lifetime limit comes down from April 2027 and a new Founders' Relief is introduced alongside it, which is tighter on who qualifies and more generous where it does. Reading either one on its own gives you the wrong picture.
The qualifying conditions for Founders' Relief have not been published and the consultation runs to 30 November 2026, so nobody can tell you yet which applies to you. If an exit is on your horizon, that’s a conversation with your tax adviser, not something to settle from a newsletter.
We’re not tax advisers and this article is not tax advice. It’s what we would be putting in a plan, which is a different thing.
What this Budget doesn't change
The work that was already in front of you. Next year's plan still needs building, December is still three working weeks long and the businesses that come out of a flat year in good shape are the ones that did the arithmetic in November rather than in March.