TAX PLANNING · RESEARCH & INSIGHTSubject: Before you approve year-end tax spending, ask for the cash timeline
Preview text: Three checks for practice owners, contractors and agency founders this week.
Edition: Week of 2 November 2026
The decision this week
A tax proposal is useful only if it improves a real decision. Before authorising an asset purchase, retirement contribution or new advisory retainer, ask for one page showing the cash leaving the business, when any tax cash benefit arrives and who completes each action.
Start with the work your current accountant already covers. An adviser’s headline number should be reconciled against that baseline before you compare it with the fee.
Contractors: a deduction is not a funding plan
IRS guidance issued in January addresses permanent 100% additional first-year depreciation for qualifying property acquired after 19 January 2025. The eligibility rules still matter, and the tax benefit is not the purchase price returned in cash. IRS — IR-2026-06: Additional first-year depreciation guidance, 14 January 2026
Your action: compare necessary purchase, finance and defer scenarios. Ask the controller for the lowest cash balance under delayed customer receipts. Put the expected tax cash effect on the actual forecast month rather than netting it off the invoice on day one.
Practice owners: check retirement implementation
For 2026, affected catch-up contributions must be Roth where the prior-year sponsor-wage threshold is exceeded; the relevant threshold is $150,000. Ask the payroll provider and plan administrator to confirm the treatment of affected participants and any remaining corrections. IRS — Internal Revenue Bulletin 2025-49: 2026 retirement limits
Your action: give one person responsibility for reconciling payroll and plan records. Partner approval and employee implications belong in the same discussion as the tax projection.
Agencies: question stale R&E advice
If a proposal refers to the small-business retroactive election for domestic research expenses, ask which procedure remains available today. The general deadline described in Revenue Procedure 2025-28 was 6 July 2026, which has passed. IRS — Internal Revenue Bulletin 2025-38: Revenue Procedure 2025-28
Your action: bring the historical treatment and project facts to the reviewer. Do not assume every software expense or creative project supports the same treatment, or that a historical election remains open.
One question for the adviser
“Which benefits in this proposal are additional to our existing current-law plan, and what must we do to realise them?”
Use the answer to create a short register: claim, baseline, evidence, cash, owner and next action. If a critical field is unknown, that is the next piece of work—not a reason to accept the headline estimate.
Read next: the buyer question hub and eight-stage selection game plan included in this research pack.
Independent US tax-adviser research for business owners. This briefing prepares questions for your advisers; it does not determine your tax treatment.