Welcome back to my blog summary of September 2026 Small Business Updates. An Extension of the instagram post that i posted on the 3rd September 2026: View this here
Headline Stories
The Budget is coming - on 28th October. Currently, the only concrete measure confirmed so far is a further 20% business rates cut for pubs/live music venues from April 2027. Then, coming in currently/before the budget, VAT will be removed from domestic electricity bills from 1 October, and the £2 bus fare cap has been restored.
Etsy cut 12% of its workforce - days after banking $1.4bn from the completed eBay–Depop acquisition, the company has announced that approximately 220 people will lose their roles at the company.
AI-driven traffic and orders are going up - Shopify have told investors AI-driven traffic and orders tripled year-over-year in its Q2 earnings call; this signals a real shift in how customers are discovering stores and products. Reported by TechChrunch.
Others mentioned
- Etsy’s fur ban has taken effect from 11th August; this means you will not be able to list anything made from fur, and existing listings will be disabled (Leather, wool and sheepskin still okay). You can read the rules here
- Met Office confirmed Summer 2026 was the UK’s hottest on record
- HMRC begins auto-enrolling tax payers who should have joined MTD for income tax
- 7th Nov is the next MTD quarterly deadline for the quarter ending 5th October
- TikTok Shop UK milestone: 300,000 small UK businesses now selling on the platform and LIVE shopping sessions up 55% year-on-year
- Google has started rolling out AI-visibility reports in Search Console to a subset of sites. It’s a dedicated view showing how often your content is surfaced inside AI Overviews/AI Mode. Reported by Search Engine Journal
Extra news that I didn't cover, but might be useful
- £26bn tied up in UK small business late payments — 42% of small firms hit by late payment in the past year; three-quarters of small business owners pay themselves under £20k (CPA, 1 Sept 2026)
- Energy price cap rising 4% from 1 October to £1,723/year (typical household) — driven by gas costs; VAT removed from electricity bills as an offsetting measure through to March 2027. Relevant to home-based businesses (Ofgem, 26 Aug 2026)
- Etsy Seller Policy rewrite and mandatory Delivered Duty Paid for US-bound shipments took effect 9 July — non-US sellers must now prepay import duties or lose Purchase Protection eligibility (SCRAPD)
- US 10% tariff on UK exports confirmed as permanent from 24 July 2026 (no expiry date), alongside the end of the $800 de minimis exemption for postal shipments — affects anyone shipping product to US customers via Etsy, Shopify or Faire
- UK manufacturing PMI dipped slightly (51.9 → 51.7) in August but stayed in growth territory; business confidence hit a 6-month high, though smaller manufacturers are falling behind larger ones on output and orders (CPA, 2 Sept 2026)
If you found this post useful, come back for more next month, or you can follow me on instagram for blog updates.