Extension season is nearly over. The 15th has come and gone for S-corps and partnerships, and October 15 is the last filing deadline of the year. What starts now is the only stretch where we can still change your 2026 tax bill.
I want to be clear about the difference, because it’s the thing most people miss. A tax return is a record of decisions you already made. Everything below is a decision you can still make. Once we get to January, I’m a historian. Right now I’m useful.
Four changes are worth your attention this quarter.
Your 1099s change in January, and fewer forms is not good news
Beginning with 2026 payments, the filing threshold for Forms 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC rises from $600 to $2,000. Separately, the 1099-K threshold is back to $20,000 and 200 transactions. The platforms you sell through will send you far fewer forms than they did last year.
That sounds like less paperwork, and it is. It’s also a trap.
Fewer forms arriving doesn’t mean less taxable income. It means less of your income is being reported to you. If your bookkeeping has quietly been leaning on the 1099s that show up in the mail to reconstruct the year, 2026 is the year that stops working. Income that no longer generates a form is still income, and the burden of tracking it has shifted entirely onto you.
It cuts the same way if you pay contractors. A lower form count doesn’t reduce your obligation to have current W-9s on file, and it doesn’t help you if a payee’s information turns out to be wrong in January.
What to do: get vendor W-9s and payee records current before December. If your books are behind, this is the month to catch up — it’s a two-hour job in September and a two-week job in February.
Charitable giving has a floor now, and small gifts may get you nothing
Three changes land in 2026, and they pull in different directions.
If you itemize, only giving above one half of one percent of your adjusted gross income is deductible. On $400,000 of AGI, that means your first $2,000 of donations does nothing for you at all.
If you don’t itemize, you can finally deduct up to $1,000 in cash gifts — $2,000 on a joint return — without itemizing. Donor-advised funds are excluded.
And if you’re in the top bracket, the deduction is now worth roughly 35 cents on the dollar rather than 37.
Corporations face their own new 1% floor, which matters if you’re on the receiving end of corporate giving.
Most people donate about the same amount every year out of habit. That habit is now the expensive way to do it.
What to do: if you give steadily, bunching two or three years of giving into a single year is how you clear the floor instead of donating underneath it. It’s a decision that has to be made before December 31, and it takes about ten minutes to run the numbers.
The equipment write-off is permanent now, which changes the timing
100% bonus depreciation is back and is no longer scheduled to phase down. Section 179 expensing sits at $2,560,000 for 2026, with the phase-out beginning at $4,090,000.
For most businesses those ceilings are beside the point. What matters is that the full first-year write-off is available again, and that it’s no longer a use-it-before-it-shrinks situation.
Which moves the pressure off the decision and onto the date. “Placed in service” still means placed in service — up and running, not ordered. If equipment needs installation, configuration, or a buildout, a November purchase can easily land on the wrong side of December 31.
What to do: if the purchase is happening anyway, whether it lands December 30 or January 5 is worth real money. That’s an October conversation, while lead times still cooperate. Which structure you use — Section 179 or bonus depreciation — depends on your income picture for the year, so it’s worth asking before you order.
Retirement limits went up, and some plans have to exist by December 31
For 2026: 401(k) deferrals go to $24,500, with an $8,000 catch-up at 50 and $11,250 at ages 60 through 63. IRAs go to $7,500. HSAs go to $4,400 for self-only coverage and $8,750 for a family.
Here’s the part that costs people money every year. The contribution can often wait until you file. The plan frequently cannot.
Someone tells me in March that they’d like to open a solo 401(k) for the prior year, and I have to explain that the door closed in December. The money was there. The paperwork wasn’t.
What to do: if you’ve been meaning to open a solo 401(k), start a SEP, or add a profit-sharing tier, don’t begin that in March. Which one fits depends on whether you have employees, how variable your income is, and how much you actually want to put away — worth a conversation before you pick.
Depending on who you are
S-corp and partnership owners. Your reasonable compensation figure deserves an actual look before year end. It drives payroll tax, your QBI deduction, and your retirement contribution ceiling all at once, and most owners set it once and never revisit it.
New Jersey pass-through owners: the BAIT estimate schedule for calendar-year 2026 is April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15, 2027, with Form PTE-100 due March 15, 2027. The election is made annually by the original return due date, and an extension doesn’t extend the payment — 80% of the liability has to be in by the original due date.
If your 1040 is on extension. October 15. And a reminder worth money: the extension extended your filing, not your payment. Interest has been accruing since April, currently 7%, plus a half-percent per month in late-payment penalty. If you expect to owe, paying something now costs less than paying all of it in October.
Medical and dental practices. The employee deductions for tips and overtime run from 2025 through 2028, and the tracking burden sits on your payroll system rather than your staff’s returns. If your system isn’t separating out the “half” of time-and-a-half, that’s a January problem you can fix in October.
Nonprofits. Extended Form 990 for calendar-year filers is due November 16 this year, since the 15th is a Sunday. Separately, the new 1% floor on corporate charitable deductions changes how your larger corporate gifts should be timed — worth knowing before the year-end appeal goes out, not after.
Construction and tech. The equipment section above is the one for you, and the placed-in-service date is the whole ballgame. Equipment, vehicles, buildouts, and capitalized software all live or die on whether they’re genuinely running by December 31.
Performers, creatives, and wedding vendors. The enhanced ACA premium subsidies expired at the end of 2025, so the eligibility cliff at 400% of the federal poverty line applies again for 2026. If you buy coverage on the marketplace, how much income you recognize before December 31 now affects your premium, not just your tax. Open enrollment opens November 1. Look at your numbers in October, not after you’ve enrolled.
Where this leaves you
Every item above is still open. That’s the entire argument for doing this in September rather than December — by the time the return is being prepared, the decisions have already been made for you.
If something here made you think I should probably deal with that, trust the instinct.
This is general information, not tax advice for your specific situation. Reach out and we’ll look at your facts.
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