A Practical Guide to the Seven Weeks Before 28 October
Introduction
You have probably had the conversation already - with your accountant, at an event, or in your own head at four in the morning. The Autumn Budget is confirmed for Wednesday 28 October 2026. Capital gains tax is among the areas drawing the most speculation. If you have been thinking about selling within the next few years, the obvious question is whether to move now.
This guide separates what has been decided from what is being guessed at, sets both against how long a sale actually takes, and sets out what can usefully be done in the weeks remaining. It does not tell you whether to sell. It gives you the material to decide.
What Has Already Changed
Some of the increase owners are bracing against has already landed.
Business Asset Disposal Relief - the reduced capital gains tax rate on qualifying business sales, capped at £1m of gains across your lifetime - was 10% until April 2025, rose to 14% for 2025-26, and rose again to 18% for disposals on or after 6 April 2026. Above the lifetime limit, the main capital gains rates for 2026-27 are 18% within the basic rate band and 24% above it. The annual exempt amount stands at £3,000, down from £12,300 as recently as 2022-23.
Two adjacent changes matter to particular routes out. Employee ownership trust relief was reduced for disposals on or after 26 November 2025, so only 50% of the gain is exempt and the remainder is taxable under the normal rules, with that relief and Business Asset Disposal Relief not available together. And from 6 April 2026, incorporation relief must be claimed through Self Assessment rather than applying by default.
HMRC's tax relief statistics, published in January 2026, put Business Asset Disposal Relief at 39,000 claimants on £10.3bn of gains in the 2023-24 tax year, producing a total tax charge of £1bn. Gains eligible for the relief are concentrated among people with larger gains, which is to say among owners selling a business rather than a shareholding on the side.
Insight: Measured against the 24% main rate that has applied since October 2024, the relief's advantage has fallen from 14 percentage points to 6. On a full £1m lifetime allowance, that is a maximum saving of £60,000 for a higher-rate taxpayer.
What Is Speculation
Nothing about capital gains tax has been confirmed for 28 October.
The commonly cited proposal is alignment of capital gains rates with income tax rates. That design comes from a 2024 report by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, which modelled rates of 20%, 40% and 45% on taxable gains depending on the taxpayer's income tax band, alongside an investment allowance and changes to the tax base, and estimated the package would raise around £14bn.
Two qualifications travel with that figure and are usually left behind. It is additional total tax revenue rather than additional capital gains receipts, with a substantial part expected to come from income tax once the incentive to take remuneration as gains falls away. And on the authors' own worst case for behavioural response, it drops to £9.6bn, and only holds if the full package is implemented rather than the rate alone.
Against that, BDO points to Treasury modelling suggesting that significant increases in the capital gains rate reduce total revenue collected, because owners hold gain-rich assets rather than sell them. Advisers report the same behaviour anecdotally.
The practical consequence is that a rise is credible, not announced, and argued about on revenue grounds rather than political ones. HURST Corporate Finance, writing in August, reported an unusual volume of unprompted calls from clients worried about the Budget, and noted that speculation produces two opposite errors: decisions hurried by fear of what might come, and decisions postponed until the Chancellor has spoken.
The Timetable Problem
The Ideals M&A Outlook 2026, drawn from transactions run through its data rooms, puts the average time to complete a deal at 264 days in 2025, against 205 days in 2020. The Bank of England's Agents reported in December 2025 that M&A activity remained subdued, with deals taking longer because of increased due diligence and regulatory uncertainty, and in February 2026 that mergers and acquisitions continued to be held back by uncertainty.
Seven weeks is forty-nine days. The average deal takes closer to nine months.
That arithmetic settles the question for most owners. A sale started now will not complete before the Budget, and in many cases not before the end of the tax year either. The group for whom the timing question is live is narrow: owners already at heads of terms - the outline agreement setting out the main terms before the lawyers draft - or holding an offer they are minded to accept.
Even for that group, accelerating to land on one side of a date carries its own risk. When the relief rate rose in April 2026, an unconditional contract signed before the deadline did not automatically secure the lower rate. It had to qualify as an "excluded contract", meaning it was not created to obtain a tax advantage through timing and, where the parties were connected, was entered into for wholly commercial reasons. The claim sits with the taxpayer, with no claim needed where total gains on such contracts do not exceed £100,000. Anti-forestalling provisions of this type are routine around rate changes, and any acceleration should be tested with your own tax adviser before it is agreed.
Insight: If you are not already in a live process with terms agreed, the Budget is not a deadline you can meet. Treat it as information you will have on 29 October, not as a date to sell into.
What Happens After a Budget
There is a pattern in the Bank of England's own reporting that is worth knowing before you decide to rush.
Its Agents recorded in February 2026 that uncertainty had reduced a little following the previous Autumn Budget, and in March that business services sentiment had improved as activity which had been paused over Budget uncertainty restarted. Deals do not disappear over a Budget. They wait for it, and then they move.
That matters to the owner weighing acceleration against preparation. If you intend to sell in 2027, you will be selling into a market with one fewer unknown in it, alongside every other owner who waited. The competitive question then is not whether you moved first, but whether you arrive better prepared than the businesses beside you.
Sizing the Actual Trade-off
Two illustrative figures, on a hypothetical founder rather than a real one.
Take a £3m gain, £1m of it within the lifetime limit. At current rates: 18% on the first £1m and 24% on the remaining £2m, giving £660,000. If the main rate were aligned with higher-rate income tax at 40% and the relief left as it is, the same gain would cost £980,000. The swing is £320,000, on an assumption chosen as an upper bound rather than a forecast.
Now the same business sold at £3.5m. A 10% movement in the agreed price is £350,000. Price moves by that much routinely, driven by what diligence finds: earnings a buyer cannot verify, customer contracts that terminate on a change of ownership, shareholders who turn out not to agree, records that cannot be produced on request.
The two numbers are comparable in size. Preparation influences one of them and has no bearing on the other.
What Seven Weeks Can Buy
Four things, each of which holds its value whatever is announced.
Your actual tax position, not the general rate. Base cost, how much of the £1m lifetime limit you have already used, how shares are held between spouses, whether the two-year qualifying conditions are met, and whether anything in your share structure would cause a problem. This is one meeting with your accountant and tax adviser, and most owners discover at least one thing they had wrong.
Shareholder alignment. A rate change lands differently on each shareholder, because base costs, remaining lifetime limits and personal plans differ. In our experience, disagreement between shareholders about whether to sell is one of the surer ways to lose a live process, and it is considerably cheaper to surface now than in week fourteen of diligence.
The evidence a buyer will ask for. Normalised earnings - profit adjusted for one-off and owner-specific costs so a buyer sees the underlying run rate - with the workings behind them. Contract review, particularly change-of-control clauses. Clean statutory and ownership records. None of this is wasted in any scenario.
A realistic view of value. Deciding between acting and waiting is only meaningful against a number that reflects what the market would actually pay, rather than a figure carried in your head since 2021.
What Seven Weeks Cannot Buy
A completed sale from a standing start. A business that is genuinely ready when it was not ready in August. Certainty about the Chancellor's decisions. And, on the April 2026 precedent, a guaranteed rate lock through a contract signed to beat a date.
Insight: Every item on the first list is useful if the Budget changes nothing. Nothing on the second list becomes available by trying harder.
If a Process Is Already Live
If terms are agreed and completion is genuinely in sight, the timing question is real. Three points are worth putting to your advisers now rather than in October.
Ask your solicitor what the current timetable actually supports, including exclusivity periods and conditions still outstanding. Ask your tax adviser specifically about anti-forestalling exposure if anything is accelerated. And consider what acceleration signals to the buyer: a seller visibly working to a deadline has less room in the closing negotiations, which is where price adjustments and warranty positions tend to be settled.
Making the Call
There is a reasonable case for moving. The relief rate has risen twice in two years and only in one direction. If you intended to sell within the next twelve months, starting preparation now costs little and puts you in a position to act early in 2027 with the position known.
There is an equally reasonable case for holding. Nothing has been announced. The Treasury's own modelling argues against a large rise. A business taken to market before it can answer a buyer's questions surrenders more in price than most plausible rate changes take in tax.
Both readings sit on the same facts. Which one applies depends on where your business stands, whether your shareholders agree, and what you want for yourself after the sale.
Tax questions belong with your accountant and tax adviser; structure and contract questions with your solicitor. Our work sits alongside them, on your side of the table, while you decide whether to sell, hold or prepare - and our view on that question is never paid on a deal happening. If a clear reading of where your business stands would help you decide before the end of October, that is a conversation worth having now.
Sources referenced include HMRC statistics, Bank of England Agents' summaries, independent tax research and M&A market reports, 2024-2026.
About Exit Strategy & Solutions
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Our approach combines deep market intelligence, strategic positioning expertise, and an unwavering focus on protecting your interests at every stage.
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Disclaimer
This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or regulated investment advice. Examples cited are based on composite scenarios for illustrative purposes. Exit Strategy & Solutions is not responsible for decisions made based on information in this article.
