Most of the business changes in the Autumn Budget 2026 start in April 2027, and some come later, in 2028 and 2029.
You have a few months to look at pay, premises costs and any big purchases before the first dates arrive.
Chancellor John Healey delivered his first Budget on Wednesday 28 October 2026.
The main rates of Corporation Tax, Income Tax, National Insurance and VAT stayed the same. The changes are in reliefs, allowances and how some taxes are collected, and they start on these dates:
- 1 January 2027: higher first-year allowance for new equipment
- 1 April 2027: business rates changes in England, new minimum wage rates, a new VAT rule for services bought from overseas, lower writing-down allowance for companies
- 6 April 2027: benefits in kind through payroll, lower Business Asset Disposal Relief limit, new Founders’ Relief and a higher EMI2 limit
- 1 July 2027: the 5p fuel duty cut ends
- October 2027: online marketplaces start collecting VAT for UK sellers
- 6 April 2028: most other benefits in kind move to payroll
- April 2029: mandatory VAT e-invoicing, and Direct Debit for VAT and PAYE bills
Business rates in England
Business rates are the change you’ll notice first if your company has a shop, café, pub, restaurant or gym in England.
From 1 April 2027, retail, hospitality and leisure properties with a rateable value up to £18,000 get 100% Small Business Rate Relief, up from £12,000. Partial relief will run up to £21,000, up from £15,000. The Chancellor said around 70,000 more businesses will pay no business rates at all.
For other retail, hospitality and leisure properties, bill increases will be capped at inflation in 2027-28 and 2028-29. Pubs, social clubs and most live music venues get a bigger discount, with their relief rising from 15% to 35%. Vape shops and adult gaming centres lose some of their reliefs.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland set their own business rates, so the rates changes above cover England only.
Pay and staff
The National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over rises by 3.9% to £13.21 an hour from 1 April 2027. The rate for 18 to 20 year olds goes up to £11.27, and 16 and 17 year olds and apprentices get £8.31.
Employer National Insurance and workplace pension contributions are worked out from pay, so they go up too.
Ampere’s free salary calculator shows the total employer cost of a UK salary, with employer National Insurance and pension included, next to the employee’s take-home pay. It runs on 2026/27 rules, so you can see what each role costs you today and plan April’s pay review from there.
Company cars, vans, fuel and private medical cover will be taxed through payroll from 6 April 2027, and most other benefits in kind follow from 6 April 2028.
Equipment and selling your company
Full expensing stays, so companies can still deduct the whole cost of qualifying new equipment and machinery from their profits in the year they buy it.
For LLPs and LPs, and for companies buying equipment to lease out, the first-year allowance rises from 40% to 50% for spending from 1 January 2027. It covers new equipment only, and cars are left out.
The £1 million Annual Investment Allowance stays the same, so most companies, LLPs and LPs can still deduct the full cost of up to £1 million of equipment a year, second-hand included.
Anything those allowances don’t cover goes on the writing-down allowance, which spreads the cost over several years. Its main rate falls from 14% to 12% a year, from 1 April 2027 for companies and 6 April 2027 for LLPs and LPs.
Two changes on 6 April 2027 matter if you plan to sell your company one day.
The lifetime limit for Business Asset Disposal Relief falls from £1 million to £500,000, and gains above it are taxed at the normal Capital Gains Tax rates of 18% or 24%.
The second is a new Founders’ Relief, with a 10% rate on up to £10 million of lifetime gains. It’s for founders and early investors of high-growth, innovative companies who held at least 25% of the company when it started trading. The company also has to meet conditions on turnover, staff numbers and growth.
All of these conditions, including the 25% stake, are still being consulted on.
If you give staff options to buy shares through a Company Share Option Plan (CSOP), the plan gets a new name, EMI2, and a bigger limit. From 6 April 2027, each employee can hold up to £120,000 of options, double today’s £60,000.
VAT, fuel and later changes
If your company isn’t VAT-registered and buys services from overseas businesses, those suppliers will have to charge you UK VAT from April 2027. If you’re VAT-registered, nothing changes, and you keep adding it yourself on your VAT return.
Selling to consumers through an online marketplace changes from October 2027, when the marketplace starts collecting and paying the VAT on those sales. It covers every VAT-registered seller, plus sellers who aren’t registered once their sales on one platform go over £90,000 a year. Sales to other businesses are left out.
From 1 April 2029, VAT-registered businesses will need to send and receive VAT invoices as e-invoices when trading with other VAT-registered businesses, and a PDF won’t count.
The detailed rules are due by April 2028.
Also from April 2029, you’ll need a Direct Debit set up with HMRC for VAT and PAYE, if you don’t pay that way already. You can still pay another way before a cut-off date HMRC will set, and the Direct Debit only collects what’s left unpaid.
For businesses running vans or delivery vehicles, the 5p cut in fuel duty now lasts until 1 July 2027. On that date, fuel duty goes up by 5p a litre and rises with inflation.
Most of these tax changes still need to go through Parliament before they become law.
April 2027 is the main date to plan for, since pay rates and business rates bills change then, so if you’re buying equipment, check the January and April dates above before you pick a month.
