Good morning. Tax rules don’t usually make a newsletter, but this one changes what you buy and when. The write-off math on trucks and equipment just swung hard in your favor — and a credit some of you sell against just disappeared.
Top story — 100% bonus depreciation is back, for good
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (signed July 4, 2025) permanently restored 100% bonus depreciation for qualified equipment and vehicles that are both bought and placed in service after January 19, 2025. Translation: instead of writing a new truck, lift, or excavator off a little at a time over five to seven years, you can deduct the full cost in year one. For a shop buying a $70k service truck or a $120k set of gear, that’s a real cut to this year’s tax bill — cash that stays in the business. The catch is timing: the deduction lands the year the asset is placed in service, not the year you order it.
Quick hits
Section 179 got bigger too. First-year expensing was raised to a $2.5 million cap with the phase-out starting at $4 million, indexed for inflation — which for 2026 indexes up to $2.56 million and $4.09 million. Almost no trades shop hits that ceiling — so for you it’s effectively uncapped.
Heavy work trucks qualify. Vehicles over a 6,000 lb GVWR — most of your vans and pickups — can be fully expensed, with no passenger-auto luxury cap.
The 25C credit is dead. OBBBA §70505 ended the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit for anything placed in service after Dec 31, 2025. If you sold high-efficiency HVAC on that tax credit, it’s gone for 2026 installs — change the pitch.
The Tip — Time your buys, don’t force them
Talk to your CPA before year-end about placing any big-ticket purchase in service by Dec 31 to grab the full write-off this tax year. But don’t buy iron you don’t need just for the deduction — a 100% write-off on a truck you don’t have work for is still a truck you didn’t need. The move is to pull planned purchases forward, not invent new ones. And if you quote high-efficiency HVAC, scrub “federal tax credit” out of your 2026 proposals so you’re not promising money that no longer exists.
Tool watch — [Not sponsored]
Ask your bookkeeper to add a ”placed in service” date column to your fixed-asset list. The IRS cares about the install/ready-to-use date, not the invoice date — and that one field decides which tax year the deduction falls in. Cheap insurance against a missed write-off.
That’s the callout. See you next time.
The Callout — the business brief for the trades. We label every commercial placement: [Sponsor], [Affiliate], or [Not sponsored]. Today’s Tool watch is our own honest read — no one paid for it. Nothing here is tax advice; run the specifics past your CPA. 231J Ramparts Road, Te Anau 9600, New Zealand · Unsubscribe anytime.
Sources: Grant Thornton — OBBBA offers new ways to accelerate depreciation · Doeren Mayhew — OBBBA in 2026: key business tax planning considerations · PKF O’Connor Davies — Updates to Energy Credits Under the OBBBA · Instead — What §70505 ended for the 25C home energy credit