This week, the Chancellor, John Healey delivered the government’s Autumn Budget 2026. B P Collins’ outlines the key announcements:
Businesses
- There will be no change on tax on income from dividends and no change on tax to income from employment.
- Healey will lower the threshold for business asset disposal relief (BADR) in capital gains tax (CGT) from £1m to £500,000.
- There will be new funding from HMRC to improve compliance and stronger powers to collect overdue tax from those who ‘can clearly afford to pay but ignore repeated contact’.
- The government will introduce legislation to amend the Stamp Duty Land Tax Group Relief rules, so that a winding up of a vendor does not prevent the relief from being clawed back within the usual three-year period if the purchasing company later leaves the group. The change will take effect from 29 October 2026.
- The government will introduce legislation to make changes to the Company Share Option Plan (CSOP) and Enterprise Management Incentives (EMI) schemes. The CSOP individual option limit will be increased to £120,000. The exception for Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs) in the EMI rules will be extended to companies arranging to become controlled by an EOT.
- From April 2029, the UK government is reforming Income Tax Self Assessment (ITSA) to collect tax more regularly rather than through traditional twice-yearly lump sums.
Business growth
- Healey will introduce a new “founders’ relief”, a 10% tax rate on lifetime gains, up to £10m, for business founders.
- He willre-establish the better regulation executive to “cut outdated regulations and admin burdens on business and on workers”.
- The tax threshold for small business rates relief for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses will increase from £12,000 to £18,000.
Developers
- There will be no major changes to building regulations for the rest of the parliament, except for safety. Biodiversity requirements will be removed from brownfield sites.
Properties and savings
- Tax rates on properties and savings income will increase by a further 2% from April 2027 – the second successive Budget tax raidafter the 2% rise on property income announced last year.
Employment
- National minimum wage and national living wage will increase by 3.9 per cent.
- Government will legislate to make sure that non-compete clauses will no longer be a barrier to hiring for the ‘most promising’ startups and scaling firms. These reforms will apply across the whole of the economy.
Banks
- Banks will face a temporary rise in surcharge, currently levied at 3% on top of the 25 per cent corporation tax rate, by an extra 3%.
AI
- Investment in developing and regulating the U.K.’s AI industry was announced.
If you’ve been affected by the announcements in today’s Budget, please get in touch at enquiries@bpcollins.co.uk or call 01753 889995 for further information and advice.
