If you own a business in South Florida — a contractor in Hollywood, a salon owner in Plantation, a rideshare driver in Fort Lauderdale, or a family restaurant in Coral Springs — you have probably heard for the last few years that a big tax increase was coming. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the law that gave pass-through businesses their signature 20% deduction and lowered individual rates, was written with an expiration date: the end of 2025. For a while it looked like 2026 would arrive with higher rates and a smaller deduction for millions of small businesses.
That is not what happened. In mid-2025, Congress passed a sweeping tax-and-budget law — commonly called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) — that canceled the cliff. It made the lower individual brackets permanent, made the 20% pass-through deduction permanent, brought back 100% first-year expensing for equipment, and rewrote several reporting rules that hit small businesses directly.12 Some of those changes save you money; others create new paperwork. Either way, the planning you did under the old “it all expires” assumption is now out of date.
This guide walks through the changes that matter most to a South Florida business owner for the 2026 tax year: the pass-through deduction, equipment write-offs, the new 1099 thresholds, what happened to brackets and the standard deduction, and the bigger-picture items like the estate exemption and the SALT cap. Throughout, the numbers are drawn from the IRS’s own 2026 inflation adjustments and guidance.
Key takeaways
- The 20% qualified business income (QBI) deduction is now permanent, the income thresholds where it phases out are higher, and there is a new $400 minimum deduction for anyone with at least $1,000 of qualified business income.23
- 100% bonus depreciation is back permanently for qualifying equipment acquired and placed in service after January 19, 2025, and the Section 179 expensing limit rises to $2.56 million for 2026.43
- The 1099-K threshold reverted to $20,000 and 200 transactions, and the 1099-NEC/1099-MISC threshold rises from $600 to $2,000 starting with 2026 payments — but all income is still taxable whether or not a form is issued.56
- The seven individual tax brackets (10% to 37%) are now permanent and inflation-adjusted; the 2026 standard deduction is $16,100 single and $32,200 married filing jointly.1
- Florida still has no state personal income tax — but federal self-employment, payroll, and entity choices still drive your real tax bill.
1. Why 2026 is different: the cliff that didn't happen
To understand 2026, you have to understand what almost happened. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered individual tax rates, nearly doubled the standard deduction, and created the Section 199A “qualified business income” deduction that lets most pass-through owners — sole proprietors, partnerships, S corporations, and LLCs — deduct up to 20% of their business profit. But to fit the law within budget rules, Congress set most of those provisions to sunset after December 31, 2025. Left untouched, 2026 would have brought higher rates and the loss of the 20% deduction.
The 2025 law changed the ending. Rather than letting the cuts lapse, it made the core individual-rate structure and the pass-through deduction permanent, while adjusting thresholds and adding some new breaks and some new reporting burdens.2 For a business owner, the practical message is simple: the tax environment you planned around in 2024 didn’t end — it largely continued, with a handful of important tweaks. The risk now isn’t a sudden rate increase; it’s missing the new opportunities because you assumed everything was changing and stopped paying attention.
“Permanent” means until Congress changes it
In tax law, “permanent” simply means there is no built-in expiration date — not that it can never change. A future Congress can always rewrite the rules. The value of permanence is planning certainty: you can make a multi-year decision (buying equipment, choosing an entity, timing income) without betting on a sunset that may or may not be extended.
2. The 20% pass-through deduction is now permanent
For most South Florida small businesses, the single most valuable line on the return is the qualified business income (QBI) deduction under Section 199A. If you operate as a sole proprietor, partnership, S corporation, or an LLC taxed as any of those, you may be able to deduct up to 20% of your qualified business income before you ever calculate your tax. On $100,000 of qualifying profit, that’s up to a $20,000 deduction — money that is simply never taxed.
Three things are worth knowing for 2026:
- It’s permanent now. The deduction was scheduled to disappear after 2025; the 2025 law made it a permanent part of the code.2
- The phase-out thresholds went up. Above certain income levels, the deduction starts getting limited — especially for “specified service” businesses like consulting, health, law, and accounting. For 2026 those limits begin phasing in at roughly $201,775 of taxable income for single filers and $403,500 for joint filers, both higher than before, so more owners qualify for the full deduction.1
- There’s a new minimum. Starting in 2026, a taxpayer with at least $1,000 of qualified business income from an active trade or business is guaranteed a minimum deduction of $400, even if other limits would otherwise reduce it to zero.3
Because the deduction interacts with your entity type, your wages, and your total taxable income, it is also one of the most common places owners leave money on the table — or claim more than they should. If your income is near those phase-out thresholds, the decisions you make about salary versus distributions, or whether to elect S-corporation treatment, can swing the deduction by thousands of dollars. That is exactly the kind of modeling worth doing before year-end, not in April.
3. Writing off equipment: bonus depreciation and Section 179
If your business buys things that last — work trucks, machinery, computers, kitchen equipment, salon chairs, tools — the rules for writing them off just got much more generous, and that has real implications for any purchase you’re weighing this year.
100% bonus depreciation is back — permanently
Under the phase-down schedule of the old law, first-year “bonus” depreciation had been dropping — 80%, then 60% — on its way to zero. The 2025 law reversed course and permanently restored 100% bonus depreciation for qualifying property acquired and placed in service after January 19, 2025.4 In plain terms: most new and used equipment your business buys and starts using can be deducted in full in the year you put it to work, instead of being written off a little at a time over many years.
The January 19, 2025 date matters
The 100% deduction applies to qualifying property acquired and placed in service after January 19, 2025. Property you had already contracted for or placed in service on or before that date can still fall under the older phase-down percentages. If you made a big purchase early in 2025, the exact timing can change your deduction — worth confirming before you file.
Section 179 expensing
Section 179 is the other way to write off equipment immediately, and it was expanded too. For 2026, a business can expense up to $2.56 million of qualifying equipment, with the benefit beginning to phase out once total purchases for the year exceed roughly $4.09 million.3 For the vast majority of South Florida small businesses, those ceilings are far above anything you’ll spend — which means the practical effect is that you can usually deduct equipment purchases in full, the year you make them.
The catch worth remembering is that a deduction only helps if you have profit to deduct it against, and accelerating a write-off pulls a future deduction into the present. Buying a $40,000 truck to “save on taxes” still costs you $40,000; the tax benefit offsets only a fraction of it. The smart move is to let these rules influence the timing of purchases you were already going to make — not to spend money you don’t need to spend.
4. The new 1099 rules every owner needs to know
Two reporting changes will touch nearly every South Florida business — both the ones that receive payments through apps and the ones that pay contractors. Neither changes what income is taxable; both change which paperwork gets generated.
| Form | Old threshold | 2026 threshold | Who it affects |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1099-K (payment apps, card processors, marketplaces) | $600, any number of transactions | $20,000 AND 200+ transactions | Anyone paid through PayPal, Venmo for business, Square, Stripe, Etsy, etc.5 |
| 1099-NEC / 1099-MISC (paying contractors) | $600 | $2,000 (payments made in 2026) | Any business that hires freelancers or subcontractors.6 |
The 1099-K change is a relief for many micro-sellers and side-hustlers. A planned $600 reporting trigger — which would have generated a flood of forms for casual sellers — was rolled back, and the threshold returned to the long-standing $20,000 in payments and more than 200 transactions.5 If you sell on a marketplace or take card payments, you may simply receive fewer forms than you feared.
The 1099-NEC change cuts the other way for owners who hire help: starting with 2026 payments, you generally only need to issue a 1099 to a contractor once you’ve paid them $2,000 or more in the year, up from the old $600 line.6 That’s less paperwork — but it’s also a trap if you misread it.
“A higher 1099 threshold doesn’t make income tax-free. If you earned it, you still report it — the only thing that changed is whether a form shows up in the mail.”
No form does not mean no tax
The most expensive misunderstanding in this whole area is assuming that if you don’t get a 1099, the money isn’t taxable. It is. Whether you cross a reporting threshold or not, business income is reportable on your return. The forms exist to help the IRS match income — they don’t define what you owe. Keep your own records regardless of which forms arrive.
5. Brackets, the standard deduction, and what stayed the same
Because the lower individual rates were made permanent, the seven federal brackets — 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35%, and 37% — carry into 2026, with the dollar thresholds adjusted upward for inflation each year.1 For a pass-through owner, this is the rate structure your business profit flows into after the QBI deduction, so it directly shapes your effective tax rate.
The standard deduction, which the 2017 law nearly doubled and the 2025 law kept, rises again for 2026:
| Filing status | 2026 standard deduction |
|---|---|
| Single | $16,100 |
| Married filing jointly | $32,200 |
| Head of household | $24,150 |
| Additional, age 65+ | $2,050 (single) / $1,650 per qualifying spouse (joint) |
For most owners, the takeaway is continuity: the deduction that shelters the first chunk of your income is larger, and the rates that apply above it are the same ones you’ve worked with for years. The planning levers — how you pay yourself, when you recognize income, what you can legitimately deduct — haven’t moved, but the QBI and depreciation changes give you more room to use them.
6. SALT, the estate exemption, and bigger-picture planning
A few changes won’t touch every owner but matter enormously to the ones they do reach — especially as your business grows or as you think about passing it on.
The SALT cap
The deduction for state and local taxes (SALT) had been capped at $10,000 since 2018. The 2025 law raised that cap substantially — to $40,400 for 2026 — though it phases back down toward $10,000 for higher earners (the reduction begins once modified adjusted gross income passes roughly $505,000).1 For most Florida residents the SALT cap is less of an issue than in high-tax states, because Florida has no state income tax — but it can still matter if you pay significant property taxes or owe income tax in another state where you do business.
The estate and gift exemption
If you’ve built real value — a business, real estate, investments — the estate-tax exemption decides how much can pass to your family free of federal estate tax. For 2026 that exemption rises to $15 million per person (so $30 million for a married couple), up from about $13.99 million in 2025.1 The 2025 law set this higher level and made it permanent, removing the scheduled drop that had many business families rushing to plan. That doesn’t make estate planning unnecessary — succession, buy-sell agreements, and life insurance to cover liquidity still matter — but it removes a ticking clock that was driving a lot of anxiety.
Where taxes meet the rest of your plan
For a business owner, taxes don’t live alone. The same profit that drives your QBI deduction funds your retirement plan; the equipment you expense affects your cash flow; the estate exemption shapes how life insurance fits into your succession plan. Handling them together — rather than one form at a time — is usually where the real savings and the real protection come from.
7. A Florida-specific lens
South Florida owners start with a genuine advantage: Florida has no state personal income tax. The profit that flows through to you from a sole proprietorship, partnership, or S corporation isn’t taxed again at the state level the way it would be in New York, New Jersey, or California. That makes the federal rules above the whole game for most owners here.
A few Florida-specific points still deserve attention:
- Self-employment tax is still federal. No state income tax doesn’t mean no tax on your business profit — Social Security and Medicare (self-employment tax) still apply to sole proprietors and partners, which is a big reason owners look at S-corporation election as they grow.
- C corporations face Florida corporate income tax. If your business is a C corporation, Florida does impose a corporate income tax, so entity choice has a state dimension even here.
- Sales tax and reemployment tax. Many Florida businesses collect sales tax and pay reemployment (unemployment) tax on employees — obligations that are separate from your income-tax return but easy to overlook when you’re focused on April.
Because we work with owners across Fort Lauderdale, Plantation, Hollywood, Sunrise, and Coral Springs, we see the same pattern again and again: the federal changes are where the money is, and Florida’s lack of an income tax makes getting the federal side right even more valuable than it would be elsewhere.
One team, four languages
Not sure how the 2026 changes hit your business?
We prepare returns and plan year-round for South Florida owners — and explain every move in English, French, Creole, or Spanish.
8. What South Florida owners should do now
- Confirm your QBI position. Check whether your taxable income is near the 2026 phase-out thresholds ($201,775 single / $403,500 joint), because that’s where entity choice and how you pay yourself can change the deduction the most.
- Time equipment purchases deliberately. With 100% bonus depreciation back and Section 179 expanded, a purchase you were already planning may be fully deductible — let the rules influence when you buy, not whether you overspend.
- Fix your recordkeeping for the new 1099 thresholds. Don’t rely on forms to tell you what you earned or paid — track contractor payments and app income yourself, since the higher thresholds mean fewer forms, not less liability.
- Revisit your entity choice. Permanent QBI rules plus self-employment-tax math make the sole-proprietor-vs-S-corporation question worth re-running, especially if your profit has grown.
- Connect taxes to the rest of your plan. Retirement contributions, life insurance for succession, and health coverage all interact with your business taxes — plan them together.
- Plan before year-end, not at filing time. Almost every lever here — income timing, purchases, salary, retirement contributions — has to be pulled before December 31. April is for reporting; the fall is for planning.
9. Frequently asked questions
Did the small-business tax cuts really not expire?
Correct. Many of the 2017 provisions — the lower individual brackets and the 20% qualified business income deduction among them — were scheduled to expire after 2025, but the 2025 tax law made them permanent. “Permanent” means there’s no built-in sunset date, though a future Congress could always change the rules again.
Can I still deduct 20% of my business income in 2026?
If you operate as a sole proprietor, partnership, S corporation, or an LLC taxed as one of those, you may deduct up to 20% of your qualified business income, subject to income limits that begin around $201,775 (single) or $403,500 (joint) for 2026. There’s also a new $400 minimum deduction for anyone with at least $1,000 of active business income.
Should I buy equipment before year-end to save on taxes?
With 100% bonus depreciation restored and Section 179 expanded, qualifying equipment can often be deducted in full the year you place it in service. But a deduction only offsets a fraction of the cost — buying something you don’t need to “save on taxes” still loses money. The right approach is to let the rules guide the timing of purchases you were already going to make.
I didn’t get a 1099 this year. Do I still owe tax?
Yes. The 1099-K and 1099-NEC thresholds went up for 2026, so you may receive fewer forms — but all business income is taxable whether or not a form is issued. Keep your own records of what you earned and what you paid contractors, independent of which forms arrive.
Does Florida tax my business profit?
Florida has no state personal income tax, so profit that flows through to you from a sole proprietorship, partnership, or S corporation isn’t taxed at the state level. C corporations do face a Florida corporate income tax, and most businesses still deal with federal self-employment tax, sales tax, and reemployment tax — so “no income tax” doesn’t mean no tax obligations.
When should I start planning — now or at tax time?
Now. Most of the meaningful moves — timing income and purchases, setting your S-corp salary, making retirement contributions — have to happen before December 31. By the time you’re filing in the spring, the planning year is already closed. A fall check-in is where most of the savings are won.
What we'll do for you
JCKC Financial Services is an independent brokerage based in Broward County. We help South Florida business owners and families with the financial side of life — tax preparation and planning, ACA / Obamacare, life insurance, Medicare, and notary services — in English, French, Creole, and Spanish. The 2026 tax changes created real opportunities for owners who plan ahead and real traps for those who assume nothing changed; our job is to make sure you’re on the right side of that line.
Whether you need to model your QBI deduction, weigh an S-corporation election, time an equipment purchase, or simply understand which of these changes actually applies to your business, we can walk you through it — and because we also handle insurance and estate documents, we can connect your taxes to the rest of your financial life. We won’t sell you a write-off you don’t need, and we’ll tell you plainly what each move will and won’t do.
Don’t wait until April to find out what 2026 means for your business — schedule a tax consultation or call (954) 825-9923. We’ll meet you in the office, online, or in the language you’re most comfortable with.
10. Sources
- Internal Revenue Service. IRS releases tax inflation adjustments for tax year 2026, including amendments from the One, Big, Beautiful Bill. irs.gov/newsroom/irs-releases-tax-inflation-adjustments-for-tax-year-2026
- Internal Revenue Service. One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act provisions overview. irs.gov/newsroom/one-big-beautiful-bill-provisions
- Tax Foundation. 2026 Tax Brackets and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (QBI, Section 179, thresholds). taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/2026-tax-brackets
- BDO. One Big Beautiful Bill Act Expands 100% Depreciation Expensing Opportunities. bdo.com/insights/tax/one-big-beautiful-bill-act-expands-100-depreciation-expensing-opportunities
- Internal Revenue Service. IRS issues FAQs on Form 1099-K threshold under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill; dollar limit reverts to $20,000. irs.gov/newsroom/irs-issues-faqs-on-form-1099-k-threshold-reverts-to-20000
- Internal Revenue Service. Treasury, IRS issue proposed regulations on backup withholding thresholds for third-party payments (1099-NEC/MISC raised to $2,000). irs.gov/newsroom/treasury-irs-proposed-regulations-backup-withholding-thresholds
Disclaimer: JCKC Financial Services is a private licensed insurance brokerage that also provides tax preparation and notary services. We are not a law firm and do not provide legal advice. Tax laws, rates, thresholds, and deduction amounts are set by federal and state law and IRS procedure and may change; the figures in this article reflect rules and inflation adjustments published for the 2026 tax year and may be revised. This article is for general information only and is not legal, tax, or financial advice or a substitute for guidance from a licensed professional about your specific situation.