Tax

I want to alert you to a tax credit that is set to expire soon. You can claim a federal income tax credit for installing electric vehicle chargers or other alternative-fuel refueling equipment, but the credit disappears for anything you place in service after June 30, 2026. 

You still have time to benefit, but you must act quickly.

The credit generally equals 30 percent of the cost of qualifying equipment. If you install equipment at your principal residence for personal use, you can claim a credit up to $1,000, provided your home sits in an eligible census tract. 

If you install equipment for business use, you can claim much larger credits—up to $100,000 per item—and you can increase the credit rate from 6 percent to 30 percent when you meet specific wage and apprenticeship rules.

Strict location rules now block many taxpayers from qualifying, so I encourage you to check your proposed installation site before you move forward. To claim the credit, you must place the equipment in a low-income or non-urban census tract—an area that covers roughly 97 percent of the U.S. land mass.

You also must start as the original user of the equipment and install components that function together as an integrated refueling or charging system.

When equipment is used for both personal and business purposes, you must split the credit based on your actual use percentages. Businesses with fleets or multiple charging ports can secure substantial credits by properly allocating all associated costs, including chargers, pedestals, electrical panels, wiring, and smart-charge management systems.

You claim the credit on IRS Form 8911. Business credits flow to Form 3800, and personal credits flow to Schedule 3 of Form 1040. You must also reduce the equipment’s basis by the amount of the credit and follow recapture rules if the equipment stops qualifying.

If you plan to install charging equipment at your home or business, I recommend evaluating your project now so you don’t miss this valuable tax benefit. I can help you confirm eligibility, estimate your credit, and structure your installation to maximize savings.

If you want to discuss this tax credit, please call me on my direct line at 408-778-9651  

• By Leon Clinton
• December 16, 2025

After four years of work, the IRS has finalized its cryptocurrency regulations, and crypto tax reporting now begins. Starting with the 2025 tax year, custodial crypto platforms must report taxable crypto transactions directly to the IRS.

“Digital asset brokers” must handle this reporting when they take custody of the digital assets their customers sell or exchange. These brokers include

• operators of centralized trading platforms such as Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance; and
• hosted wallet providers (also called “custodial wallets”).

Most crypto transactions run through these brokers.

Brokers must file the new IRS Form 1099-DA, Digital Asset Proceeds From Broker Transactions. This form reports the following:

• Customer’s name, address, and taxpayer identification number
• Name and quantity of the digital asset sold
• Sale date
• Gross proceeds amount

Brokers must file the first Forms 1099-DA for the 2025 tax year by March 31, 2026.

For 2025 only, brokers must report gross proceeds from sales or other transfers. Gross proceeds represent the total amount you receive when you sell or exchange crypto, before any fees or other costs. Beginning in 2026, brokers must also report the customer’s cost basis—the original value of the crypto at acquisition plus any associated costs.

With Form 1099-DA in place, you will find it easier to calculate your crypto gains and losses when you file your return.

The regulations also establish rules for how crypto owners determine the basis of their crypto units. FIFO (first in, first out) serves as the default method. During periods of rising prices, FIFO typically produces the largest taxable gains because it uses your earliest—and often lowest-basis—units first.

If you want to reduce tax on crypto transfers, you can use the specific identification method instead. This method allows you to identify the exact units you transfer. Transitional rules for 2025 allow you to use specific identification in your own records without notifying your broker.

The final regulations also require crypto owners to track basis on a wallet-by-wallet basis when they hold crypto across multiple wallets or exchanges. You may no longer treat all your crypto as if it sits in a single wallet or account. If you had crypto in multiple wallets or exchanges on January 1, 2025, you must allocate your unused basis to the specific accounts where you hold each asset.

If you want to discuss cryptocurrency, please call me on my direct line at xxx-xxx-xxxx.

• By Leon Clinton
• December 12, 2025

The purpose of this letter is to reveal how you can get the IRS to owe you money.

Of course, the IRS will not likely cut you a check for this money (although in the right circumstances, that will happen), but you’ll realize the cash when you pay less in taxes.

Here are six powerful business tax deduction strategies you can easily understand and implement before the end of 2025. 

1. Prepay Expenses Using the IRS Safe Harbor

You just have to thank the IRS for its tax-deduction safe harbors.

IRS regulations contain a safe-harbor rule that allows cash-basis taxpayers to prepay and deduct qualifying expenses up to 12 months in advance without challenge, adjustment, or change by the IRS.

Under this safe harbor, your 2025 prepayments cannot go into 2027. This makes sense because you can prepay only 12 months of qualifying expenses under the safe-harbor rule.

For a cash-basis taxpayer, qualifying expenses include lease payments on business vehicles, rent payments on offices and machinery, and business and malpractice insurance premiums.

Example. You pay $3,000 a month in rent and would like a $36,000 deduction this year. So on Wednesday, December 31, 2025, you mail a rent check for $36,000 to cover all your 2026 rent. Your landlord does not receive the payment in the mail until Friday, January 2, 2026. Here are the results:

• You deduct $36,000 this year (2025—the year you paid the money).
• The landlord reports $36,000 as rental income in 2026 (the year he received the money).

You get what you want—the deduction this year. 

The landlord gets what he wants—next year’s entire rent in advance, eliminating any collection problems while keeping the rent taxable in the year he expects it to be taxable. 

2. Stop Billing Customers, Clients, and Patients

Here is one rock-solid, straightforward strategy to reduce your taxable income for this year: stop billing your customers, clients, and patients until after December 31, 2025. (We assume here that you or your corporation is on a cash basis and operates on the calendar year.)

Customers, clients, and insurance companies generally don’t pay until billed. Not billing customers and clients is a time-tested tax-planning strategy that business owners have used successfully for years.

Example. Jake, a dentist, usually bills his patients and the insurance companies at the end of each week. This year, however, he sends no bills in December. Instead, he gathers up those bills and mails them the first week of January. Presto! He postponed paying taxes on his December 2025 income by moving that income to 2026.

3. Buy Office Equipment

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) reinstated 100 percent bonus depreciation and increased limits on Section 179 expensing, meaning 100 percent deductions are available on equipment or machinery that you buy and place in service before December 31.

Qualifying Section 179 and bonus depreciation purchases include new and used personal property such as machinery, equipment, computers, desks, chairs, and other furniture (and certain qualifying vehicles).

4. Use Your Credit Cards

If you are a single-member LLC or sole proprietor filing Schedule C for your business, the day you charge a purchase to your business or personal credit card is the day you deduct the expense. Therefore, as a Schedule C taxpayer, you should consider using your credit card for last-minute purchases of office supplies and other business necessities.

If you operate your business as a corporation and the corporation has a credit card in the corporate name, the same rule applies: the date of charge is the date of deduction for the corporation.

But suppose you operate your business as a corporation and you are the personal owner of the credit card. In that case, the corporation must reimburse you if you want the corporation to realize the tax deduction, which happens on the reimbursement date. Thus, submit your expense report and have your corporation make its reimbursements to you before midnight on December 31.

5. Don’t Assume You Are Taking Too Many Deductions

If your business deductions exceed your business income, you have a tax loss for the year. With a few modifications to the loss, tax law calls this a “net operating loss,” or NOL. And the good news is that NOLs can turn into future cash infusions for your business because you carry 2025 NOLs forward to future years.

What does this mean? Never stop documenting your deductions, and always claim all your rightful deductions. We have spoken with far too many business owners, especially new owners, who don’t claim all their deductions when those deductions would have produced a tax loss.

6. Deal with Your Qualified Improvement Property (QIP)

QIP is any improvement made by you to the interior portion of a building you own that is non-residential real property (think office buildings, retail stores, and shopping centers)—if you place the improvement in service after the date the building was placed in service.

The big deal with QIP is that it’s not considered real property that you depreciate over 39 years. QIP is 15-year property, eligible for immediate deduction using 100 percent bonus depreciation or Section 179 expensing.

To get the QIP deduction in 2025, you need to place the QIP in service on or before December 31, 2025.

I trust that you found these six tax-saving ideas worthwhile. If you want to discuss any of them, please call me on my direct line 408-778-9651

• By Leon Clinton
• December 9, 2025