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Salary is wages and carries payroll tax. A distribution is tax-free only up to your stock basis, and the order you take money out decides which one you have.

Cash needs a bank record. A gift of $250 or more needs a written acknowledgment. Noncash over $500 needs Form 8283, and over $5,000 needs a qualified appraisal. All for 2026.

The 2026 mileage rate is 72.5 cents. Depreciation on a car rated at 6,000 pounds or less is capped each year by section 280F. Heavier vehicles follow different rules.

IRAs and HSAs can be funded through April 15. A SEP waits for the extended date. A 401(k) paycheck deferral does not wait at all, except for one narrow case for sole owners.

Buy substantially identical securities within 30 days before or after a loss sale, in any of your accounts or your spouse's, and the loss is disallowed. Here is how to harvest cleanly.

If your itemized deductions sit near the standard deduction, giving two years of gifts in one year can beat giving the same amount every year. Here is the 2026 arithmetic.

A rental loss usually can't offset wages. Up to $25,000 can if you actively participate and MAGI is under $150,000. The rest carries forward.

A 457(b) has its own $24,500 limit, separate from the 403(b). Plan type, catch-up rules and a Roth condition decide how much of the stack you can actually use.

A SEP-IRA lets you put in about 20% of net earnings. A solo 401(k) adds a $24,500 deferral on top, which matters most below roughly $250,000 of profit.

Both let a business deduct equipment in the year it goes into service. They differ on income limits, flexibility, state treatment and sale rules, so the bigger deduction is not automatically the better one.

The converted amount is taxed as ordinary income, stacked on top of everything else you earn. A worked 2026 example prices each $10,000 slice.

Shares that have gone up can go straight to charity. You deduct their full value and the gain never reaches your return. Here is the rule, the limits and the math.

An HSA is deductible going in, untaxed while it grows and tax free coming out for medical costs. Qualifying is narrower than most people assume.

Interest runs until the balance is paid, the late-payment penalty is 0.5% a month, and an installment agreement cuts that penalty to 0.25% if you filed on time. Here is what each option costs.

Depreciate the building, not the land, over 27.5 years from the month it is ready for rent. Skip the deduction and your basis still goes down.

Skip the forecasting. Pay 90% of this year's tax or 100% of last year's (110% if last year's AGI topped $150,000) and the underpayment penalty cannot apply.

If you own a sole proprietorship, partnership or S corporation, you may be able to deduct up to 20% of your business profit. Above certain income levels, the rules get stricter.

Exercising ISOs creates no regular tax, but the spread counts as AMT income. Here is where the 2026 AMT starts, with a worked example.

Vested shares are wages. Many employers withhold a flat 22% on them, and if your bracket is higher, you pay the difference when you file.

Some tax moves expire on December 31. Others wait until the filing deadline. Here is how to sort them, with the 2026 limits and a worked example.

An extension moves the filing deadline to October 15. It never moved the payment deadline, and interest has run on any balance since April 15.

The state line runs through the Charlotte metro, and so does your tax bill. Here is how the two returns relate, and why neither state’s withholding settles the question on its own.

Depreciation is a deduction you take for years and a tax you meet once, at the sale. Knowing the size of that bill beforehand changes what you do first.

It is the part of a freelancer’s bill that nobody mentions until April, and it is not the same thing as income tax.

Half of this page points away from hiring me: the line is about whether your return contains decisions, not about what you earn.

The election trades self-employment tax on your profit for payroll filings, a second return, and a salary number you have to defend.

No safe harbor percentage, no 60/40 rule, no dollar floor: what exists is a published set of factors, a line of Tax Court cases, and a memo you write before the year starts.

The election is real money for a practice owner and mostly noise for a moonlighter, and the difference comes down to the Social Security wage base.

What a moonlighting dollar actually keeps, how to get the tax paid without a penalty, and why the solo 401(k) is smaller than the calculators promise.

Four payments, unequal windows, and one rule that keeps the penalty off your return even in a year when you write a large check in April.

Most IRS mail is a computer reporting that its records and your return disagree, and the code in the upper right corner tells you which kind of disagreement you have.

Most IRS mail is a computer comparing your return against documents it already had, which is a different problem than an audit and takes a different fix.

Most of these claims fail on the word exclusive, long before anyone gets to the arithmetic.

Engineering work sits close enough to the line that the same person can be a legitimate contractor on one project and an employee on the next.

A single filer with $120,000 of wages in 2025 sits in the 24% bracket and pays 14.9% of that income in federal tax, and both of those numbers are correct.

What the refund number actually measures, how withholding works now that allowances are gone, and how to change yours without walking into an underpayment penalty.

Three years is the default, four exceptions stretch it, and the records tied to an asset you still own follow a rule of their own.

Your old preparer's cooperation is helpful, not required, and nothing about the calendar says this has to wait until January.