Starting with 2026 returns, itemizers deduct charitable gifts only above 0.5% of adjusted gross income, and top-bracket donors keep 35 cents per dollar instead of 37. What the two new haircuts cost, and the giving patterns that still work.
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An Airbnb with average guest stays under 30 days is nonresidential real property: 39-year depreciation, not 27.5. The 80% test that decides it, what misclassifying costs each year, and the Form 3115 fix if you have been doing it wrong.
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Contribute to a Roth IRA in a year your income ends up over the limit and a 6% excise tax runs every year the money stays put. Removed or recharacterized by October 15 of the following year, the mistake costs almost nothing.
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Capital losses die against wages at $3,000 a year. Section 1244 converts up to $100,000 of a failed corporation's stock loss into an ordinary deduction in a single year, if the stock was set up right when it was issued.
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The One Big Beautiful Bill Act lifted the dependent care FSA cap from $5,000 to $7,500 starting in 2026. Whether you get it depends on your employer's plan document, and whether it beats the child care credit depends on your AGI.
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The §121 exclusion survives a home office inside the house. What you repay at sale is the depreciation claimed after May 6, 1997, taxed at no more than 25%, and for a typical office that is a four-figure bill, not five.
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Incentive stock options only get ISO treatment up to $100,000 of grant-date value that first becomes exercisable in a calendar year. Above that line the excess is a nonqualified option, taxed as wages the moment you exercise, and an acquisition can push a whole grant over it.
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The One Big Beautiful Bill Act set the federal estate and gift tax exemption at $15 million per person for 2026 and removed the sunset that was going to cut it roughly in half. For most families that means no federal estate tax, but the planning that mattered before still matters.
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Massachusetts adds a 4% surtax on top of its 5% flat tax for every dollar of taxable income above $1,107,750 in 2026. A single big year, a business sale, or an equity vest can trigger it, and married couples can no longer file separately to dodge it.
Read postThe HSA is the only account in the tax code with a triple tax break: deductible going in, tax-free growth, and tax-free withdrawals for medical costs. Fund it, invest it, leave it alone, and after 65 it works like a traditional IRA with a medical superpower.
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The self-employed health insurance deduction is alive and well for S corp owners, but only when the premiums run through payroll and land in Box 1 of the W-2. Here is the Notice 2008-1 routing that makes $18,000 of premiums 100% deductible, and the traps that quietly kill it.
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A couple finishes paying for a degree and $32,000 is still sitting in the my529 account. SECURE 2.0 lets it move into the graduate's Roth IRA, $7,500 a year with no income limits, if the account passes a 15-year test and two state-tax catches.
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