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December has a way of sneaking up on business owners. One minute you’re scheduling summer service calls, the next you’re staring at a calendar with three weeks left in the year and a list of tax questions nobody answered.
We built this year-end tax planning checklist so that doesn’t happen to you.
2026 is an important year for tax planning if you run a trades business in Dallas-Fort Worth. Major federal tax changes enacted in 2025 are now shaping year-end decisions; Texas increased its franchise-tax threshold, and equipment, payroll, and growth decisions can all affect what you owe before December 31.
Here’s what to check off before the year ends.
If you’ve been putting off buying that new truck, trailer, or piece of shop equipment, this is the year to run the numbers with your accountant first.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act restored 100% bonus depreciation and raised the Section 179 limit to $2,560,000 for 2026, with a phase-out threshold of $4,090,000. Equipment must be placed in service by December 31, 2026 to count for this year.
Placed in service means ready and available for business use, not simply ordered or paid for. A truck sitting at the dealership on January 2 helps you exactly zero on your 2026 return.
Vehicles get their own rules, and they matter a lot for trades:
Most work trucks in the trades qualify. Confirm the gross vehicle weight rating before you sign anything.
These two tools sound the same. They behave differently, and picking the right one saves real money.
Bonus depreciation has no annual dollar cap and can create a net operating loss you carry forward. Section 179 caps out and can’t push you into a loss.
Trades businesses that have a strong year, buy heavily at year-end, and want the deduction even if it exceeds their income are a good example. Bonus depreciation may allow that deduction even when Section 179 is limited by business income. Section 179 stops at the income line.
If your income swings year to year, which is common in construction and service trades, this decision deserves a real conversation before you buy. Ten minutes on the phone in November beats a surprise in April.
The Section 199A qualified business income deduction was made permanent by the 2025 law and remains up to 20% of qualified business income for 2026. The legislation also expanded income thresholds and created a $400 minimum deduction for certain taxpayers with at least $1,000 of active QBI.
That money shows up automatically only if your entity structure and wages are set up to capture it.
Check these before year-end:
A deduction you qualify for on paper and lose to bad structure hurts more than one you never had.
Good news for growing DFW businesses. For 2026 and 2027 Texas franchise tax reports, the no-tax-due threshold rose to $2,650,000 in annualized total revenue, up from $2,470,000. Keep in mind that entities below the threshold generally still need to file a Public Information Report or Ownership Information Report.
If your revenue sits near that line, year-end timing matters. Know your number before December, and understand that crossing the threshold changes your filing picture for the year.
Texas has roughly 3.5 million small businesses, and they drove 84 percent of the state’s job growth in 2024. Plenty of trades companies are crossing revenue milestones right now without realizing what those milestones trigger.
Labor costs remain a major margin pressure for DFW trades businesses. Rising wages squeeze margins, and tax planning is one of the few levers you fully control.
Before year-end:
Clean payroll in December means a boring January. We consider boring Januaries a professional achievement.
Here’s the pattern we see every year. A business owner buys equipment in October, hires two techs in November, then calls their accountant in February to ask what it all means.
By February, the answer is a history lesson.
The best tax planning happens before the decision gets made. A quick call before the truck purchase, before the bonus checks, before the new hire, turns a guess into a plan. That’s the whole difference between paying what you owe and paying what you didn’t have to.
DFW’s construction outlook stays strong through 2026, with sustained public investment keeping trades busy. Growth is coming your way. The question you actually control is whether your tax strategy grows with it.
You don’t need to become a tax expert to make smart year-end moves. You need someone who already knows your numbers, picks up the phone, and tells you what to do next in plain English.
That’s what we do all year, so December feels like a checklist instead of a scramble.
Ready to walk through your year-end plan before the deadline walks through you?
Reach out here: https://adamtraywick.com/get-in-touch/
Until next time.
Adam Traywick, CPA is the President and founding CPA of Adam Traywick, LLC, a Adam Traywick CPA small-business accounting firm. He has over 20 years of experience helping small business owners across home-services trades, hair salons, real estate, and insurance agencies optimize taxes, run cleaner books, and avoid the surprises that come from once-a-year accountants.
