Updates relevant to Construction & Trades, plus broadly-applicable ones. 31 in total.
Google's July 30, 2026 Workspace feature drop lets Gemini generate a complete slide presentation that matches your existing brand formatting by describing it and referencing prior…
A September 19, 2025 presidential proclamation imposed a one-time $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions for beneficiaries processed abroad. On June 8, 2026 a federal judge vacated the…
Y Combinator runs four batches a year (Winter/Spring/Summer/Fall); its standard deal is $500,000 plus a ~3-month in-person program in San Francisco, with acceptance around 1-2%. Th…
Antler's next cohort has an application deadline of September 30, 2026. Antler specializes in pre-team, pre-seed founders, helping individuals find a co-founder and secure first fu…
Techstars is running its Founder Catalyst Global Fall 2026 pre-accelerator, a 10-week, fully virtual, non-equity and free program from Sept 22 to Nov 27, 2026. Applications close A…
xAI released Grok 4.5 on July 8, 2026, priced at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens, with public access the next day. Elon Musk called it 'an Opus-class m…
Effective July 4, 2026, the SBA raised the cumulative cap a borrower can hold across its two flagship loan programs from $5 million to $10 million — up to $5 million through the 7(…
Ontario's 2026 budget lowers the small-business corporate income tax rate for Canadian-controlled private corporations (CCPCs) from 3.2% to 2.2%, effective July 1, 2026, prorated f…
The IRS underpayment and overpayment interest rate rose to 7% for the quarter beginning July 1, 2026, up from 6% in Q2 2026, and applies to both individuals and corporations. The r…
There is no federal FTC noncompete ban in effect — the 2024 rule was blocked and the FTC dropped its Fifth Circuit appeal on September 5, 2025. Instead the FTC is enforcing case-by…
A January 2025 USCIS policy update confirmed that a founder-owned company can petition for an O-1 visa on behalf of its own owner, and the O-1A (extraordinary ability) has ~94% app…
Interest is now 7.5% fixed for new loans (loans taken before 6 April 2026 keep 6%), and eligibility is businesses trading under five years (60 months), not under three years. £500–…
In the 2026-27 Budget (announced 12 May 2026) the Australian Government said it will permanently set the small business instant asset write-off at $20,000 from 1 July 2026. Small b…
On April 23, 2026, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a proposed rule to narrow when two businesses are treated as 'joint employers' under the Fair Labor Standards Act. It targets…
The SBA has introduced a 90% Made in America loan guarantee for small manufacturers and waived loan fees for manufacturing NAICS codes in FY2026, alongside a free 'Make Onshoring G…
Original Budget 2026 = 40% rebate, S$1,500 cash grant, S$30,000 cap (YA2026). Enhanced (announced 7 Apr 2026) = 50% rebate, S$2,000 cash grant, S$40,000 cap. Use the current enhanc…
For the 2026/27 tax year (from 6 April 2026), employer Class 1 National Insurance remains at 15% and the secondary threshold at which it becomes payable stays at £5,000 per year, c…
The taxpayer's paying (underpayment) UOMI rate is 8.97% p.a. effective 16 January 2026 (down from 9.89%), not 10.96%. Best phrased as 'currently 8.97%, set by Order in Council and…
Dependent-child sponsorship threshold rose to ~NZ$58,240/yr from 9 March 2026 (80% of the new $35.00/hr median wage), not NZ$55,844 (which held only 10 Mar 2025–8 Mar 2026).
The EB-2 National Interest Waiver lets a founder self-petition for a green card with no job offer and no PERM labor certification. After USCIS tightened its Policy Manual guidance…
Every Delaware corporation must file its annual report and pay franchise tax by March 1 each year (March 1, 2026 for the 2025 report), whether or not it did business or earned inco…
The SBA's 7(a) Working Capital Pilot (WCP) provides government-backed monitored lines of credit up to $5,000,000, with interest charged only when the line is drawn. As of February…
For 2026, the Section 179 expensing limit is $2,560,000, with the phase-out beginning at $4,090,000 of qualifying property placed in service. Separately, the One Big Beautiful Bill…
The Texas Comptroller set the 2026 franchise-tax no-tax-due threshold at $2,650,000 in annualized total revenue, up from $2,470,000 for 2024-2025. Entities at or below the threshol…
Downstate exempt executive/administrative salary threshold is $1,275.00/week, not $1,275.50 ($66,300 ÷ 52 = $1,275.00 exactly; the annual $66,300 was already correct). Upstate $1,1…
In March 2025 FinCEN flipped the Corporate Transparency Act rules: entities formerly treated as "domestic reporting companies" are exempt from beneficial ownership information (BOI…
For 2026 California's State Disability Insurance (SDI) employee withholding rate increases to 1.3%, up from 1.2% in 2025, per the EDD (form DE 3395). Since January 1, 2024 there is…
S$5,600 (general)/S$6,200 (finance) have applied to new EP applications since 1 Jan 2025; from 1 Jan 2026 they apply to renewals. The Budget 2026 step to S$6,000/S$6,600 from 1 Jan…
California's statewide minimum wage increased from $16.50 to $16.90 per hour effective January 1, 2026, applying to employers of all sizes. The white-collar exempt-employee salary…
The US now has roughly 8,420 coworking locations (up from about 7,041 in mid-2024) totaling around 152 million sq ft, still only about 2% of national office inventory. Median membe…
Under the One Big Beautiful Bill, for tax year 2026 the IRS increased the maximum employer-provided childcare tax credit (Section 45F) from $150,000 to $500,000 — and to $600,000 i…