Budget 2027 for Small Business: The Website Jobs to Do Before January

Budget 2027 did not cut your overheads, and nobody in the Dáil was ever going to. If you employ people, the headline that matters is a cost going up: the national minimum wage rises by 79 cent, from the €14.15 set in the current order ^[4], to €14.94 an hour from 1 January 2027 ^[1]. The only overhead you can trim before then is the one you control yourself, and for a lot of small employers that includes a website bill nobody has looked at in years.

I read through the Budget documents this morning with one question in mind. What does any of this change for the owner of a café, a salon or a trades business with a handful of staff? The answer comes down to three website jobs and one decision. None of them take long. All of them get harder to do in the first week of January, when you are busy and the old prices are still on your site.

What Budget 2027 Actually Changed for Employers

Strip out the housing, welfare and investment fund measures and four lines are left that touch a small business directly.

Measure	Before	After Budget 2027	From
National minimum wage	€14.15 per hour	€14.94 per hour	1 January 2027
Higher-rate employer PRSI threshold	€552 per week	€600 per week	2027
Earned Income Tax Credit	€2,000	€2,125	2027
Start-up company tax relief	Due to end in 2026	Extended to 31 December 2030	Now

The PRSI change is the one the Government is pointing to as help. Citizens Information explains the logic plainly: the threshold moves so there is "no incentive to reduce the working hours for a full-time employee on the increased minimum wage" ^[1]. Do the sum yourself. A 39-hour week at €14.94 comes to roughly €583, which stays under the new €600 line. Bank of Ireland's ThinkBusiness puts the saving at somewhere between €650 and €700 a year for each eligible employee below the threshold ^[3].

Now set that against the wage rise. 79 cent across a 39-hour week, every week of the year, is roughly €1,600 in extra gross pay for one full-time minimum-wage employee, before PRSI. So the relief takes the edge off. It does not cover the cost.

That gap is your problem, not the Minister's. Most owners close it with a mix of small price rises and small cuts, and your website ends up involved in both.

Your Price Page Goes Out of Date on 1 January

If you price by labour, and most service businesses do, January is when your prices move. Cafés, hairdressers, cleaners, childcare providers, landscapers. The menu board in the shop gets updated on the day. Your website usually does not.

Consider a typical case. A Leitrim café with four part-time staff puts 20 or 30 cent on coffees and lunches in the first week of January. The till is right. Meanwhile the menu PDF on the website still shows last year's prices, because the person who uploaded it left in the summer and nobody remembers the login. A regular arrives with a screenshot from your own site and asks why the soup costs more than you advertised. A small thing. It is also the kind of small thing that turns into a two-star review written on a phone in your car park.

There is a bigger question underneath, which we covered in our guide on whether to show prices on your website at all. If you do publish prices, January is the month to look at that page properly rather than patching one line. Two practical points:

• Change the website and the till on the same day. Not the week after. Put it in the calendar now, alongside the payroll change.
• Mind your next sale. If you raise prices in January and then run a promotion in February, the "was" price you show has to reflect the lowest price you charged in the previous 30 days. A fresh price rise does not give you a higher reference price to discount from straight away.

Your Careers Page Probably Still Says €14.15

This one catches people out. If you advertise jobs on your own site and quote an hourly rate, any figure under €14.94 is out of date from 1 January. You would have to pay the new rate regardless, but a candidate reading your advert does not know that. To them, it reads like a business offering below the legal minimum, or one that has not touched its website in a year. Neither helps you hire.

The fix takes ten minutes. Open your vacancies page, search for "€14" and update anything below the new rate. While you are there, ask whether the page is doing its job at all. We wrote separately about why a proper careers page decides who applies to you, and a tight labour market makes that more true in 2027, not less.

The Overhead You Can Actually Cut

This is the hot take, and I will stand by it. Every January, owners go through their direct debits looking for savings, and the website is one of the last lines they question. It should be one of the first.

A typical agency-built site carries running costs of somewhere between €500 and €2,500 a year once you add hosting, a maintenance retainer and the odd change request billed at €75 to €150 an hour. Plenty of owners pay that without being able to say what they get for it. And you know what happens when you want to update a price list in a hurry, right? You email someone, you wait, and then you get the invoice.

What should a website cost a small employer heading into 2027? A fair standard looks like this: one predictable annual price, with hosting, security, backups and SSL included, and full access for you to change your own prices whenever you like. No hourly charges to fix a typo, and no renewal letter that doubles the bill. Web60's €60-a-year all-inclusive plan was built to meet exactly that standard: the AI builder sets up a full WordPress site in about 60 seconds, and you edit it yourself from day one.

Two honest caveats. First, if your agency retainer covers real marketing work, such as ads or SEO that bring in measurable enquiries, that is not overhead. That is spending that pays its way, and you should keep it. Second, switching your website will not close a €1,600-per-employee wage gap on its own. It is one line in the budget, not the whole answer. But it is a line you can change this month, with no permission needed from anyone.

Starting a Company in 2027?

One quieter measure deserves a mention. The relief from corporation tax for qualifying start-up companies in their first five years has been extended by four years, to 31 December 2030 ^[2]. Sole traders also get a little more breathing room, with the Earned Income Tax Credit rising by €125 to €2,125 ^[1]. Neither will change your life. Both make 2027 a slightly better year to start something.

If that is you, do not let the website be the expensive part. Describe your business, let the AI build the site, and spend the money you would have given an agency on stock, equipment or your first hire. Try the Web60 builder and you will see a working site before you commit to anything.

What to Do Before 1 January

Budget day is noise for a week and then everyone forgets it. Your wage bill does not. The practical upshot for your website is short:

1. Book the day your prices change, and update the website the same day.
2. Search your careers page for any hourly rate under €14.94.
3. Pull up last year's total website spend and ask what each euro actually bought.

Do those three things in October and January becomes one less thing to worry about. What you decide about the third one is up to you.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does the minimum wage go up in 2027?

The national minimum wage is due to rise from €14.15 to €14.94 per hour from 1 January 2027, an increase of 79 cent, as announced in Budget 2027. Payroll and any published hourly rates, including job adverts on your website, should reflect the new rate from that date.

How much does the employer PRSI change save a small business?

The weekly threshold for the higher rate of employer PRSI rises from €552 to €600 in 2027. Published estimates put the saving at roughly €650 to €700 a year for each employee earning below the new threshold. It offsets part of the minimum wage increase, not all of it.

Did Budget 2027 change VAT for retail or hospitality?

No general VAT rate change for shops, cafés or service businesses was announced in Budget 2027. The VAT changes announced were narrow, such as respiratory vaccines for livestock and the VAT compensation scheme for charities. Check with your accountant for anything specific to your sector.

Do I need to update my website prices when the minimum wage rises?

Only if you change your prices, but most labour-based businesses will. If you publish a price list or menu online, update it on the same day as your till or quotes so customers never see two different prices. Should you run a sale afterwards, the reference price you show must be the lowest you charged in the previous 30 days.

Is the cost of a business website tax deductible?

Running costs such as hosting and annual subscriptions are generally treated as business expenses, while a large one-off build may be treated differently. Your accountant can confirm how your own website costs should be claimed.

Sources