A Budget date is locked in, the Bank of England is sitting on its hands, hiring is cooling, and a tax change that quietly went live in April is about to catch a lot more sole traders. Here’s the rundown — six things worth five minutes of your Sunday coffee.
1. The Budget date is set — and the mood music has changed
Chancellor John Healey has confirmed the Autumn Budget for Wednesday 28 October — the first under Prime Minister Andy Burnham since he took over from Keir Starmer in July. Burnham has already signalled taxes may need to rise “a little” to fund spending commitments. Nothing is confirmed, but the areas getting the most attention from advisers are business rates reform, capital gains tax, and whether the fuel duty freeze survives. We’ve already seen one version of this play out — see our piece on what the 2026 business rates changes meant for pubs and restaurants. Two months is enough time to model a few scenarios rather than react on the day.
- Limited company: if a business sale or share transfer is on the horizon, any CGT change would apply on the sale date, not the announcement — worth understanding the current rules before assuming they’ll still apply in November.
- Sole trader: business rates changes tend to hit premises-based traders — shops, salons, workshops — hardest. Home-based and online sole traders are largely untouched by this one.
2. Bank of England holds at 3.75% — but borrowing is getting pricier anyway
The Monetary Policy Committee left the base rate unchanged at its July meeting, with the next decision due 17 September. That sounds like calm, but long-term global borrowing costs have kept climbing regardless — 30-year US Treasury yields hit their highest level since 2007 this month — and that tends to feed through to UK mortgage and business finance rates over time. If you’re planning to refinance a loan or look at finance products for new equipment this autumn, get quotes now rather than assuming rates are settled.
3. The jobs market is cooling, and small employers are leading the retreat
Job vacancies fell to a five-year low of around 707,000, and private-sector wage growth slowed to 2.8% — the weakest pace in nearly six years. Small employers are pulling back hardest, citing the combined weight of employer National Insurance, wage costs and energy bills. We made the case this week that this pullback is the sensible, rational response for most small employers, not a crisis. Separately, the Low Pay Commission is currently gathering evidence for the National Living Wage rate that will apply from April 2027 — worth knowing about now if hiring plans stretch into next year, even before a figure is set.
4. Confidence has dropped to its lowest since the last cost-of-living squeeze
Household sentiment has fallen to levels last seen at the start of the 2023 cost-of-living crisis, with people citing job insecurity, falling real incomes and thinning savings. For any business relying on discretionary spending — retail, hospitality, personal services — that’s a signal to plan Q4 stock and promotions a little more cautiously than usual, rather than assuming last year’s patterns repeat.
5. The next energy price cap lands this week
Ofgem is due to announce the domestic price cap for October to December by 26 August, with early supplier predictions pointing to a modest rise of around 3.7%, softened slightly by a VAT cut on electricity from 1 October worth roughly £45 a year to a typical household. The domestic cap doesn’t set what businesses pay — most are on fixed commercial contracts — but it’s an early read on where wholesale costs are heading. If your business energy contract is up for renewal this autumn, it’s worth revisiting our guides on fixed vs variable business energy tariffs and switching suppliers without getting stung by exit fees.
6. Making Tax Digital is already live — and the threshold is about to widen
Since 6 April 2026, sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000 have had to keep digital records and file quarterly updates through approved software instead of one annual return — see our full breakdown in Making Tax Digital: what it means for your business. HMRC expects that to catch around 780,000 people. From April 2027, the threshold drops to £30,000, pulling in an estimated 970,000 more. It’s one of several bills and obligations that have quietly stacked up this year, as we noted in Another Month, Another Task, Another Bill Goes Up. If trading income is anywhere near £30,000, this is the year to get software sorted, not the year it becomes mandatory.
- Sole trader: this applies directly to you if you’re over the threshold — check qualifying income now, not next spring.
- Limited company: MTD for Income Tax doesn’t apply to companies — you still file a Company Tax Return. It only matters here if you also have personal sole trader or rental income above the threshold.
That’s the week. Some of the above is speculation dressed up as insight — the Budget items especially — so treat those as planning inputs, not certainties, until the Chancellor actually stands up on 28 October.
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