“My CPA says I can buy the truck before year end and write it off.” A version of that sentence comes up in almost every fourth quarter, and it’s usually followed by the real question underneath it, which has nothing to do with tax law. Can you actually afford it?
The Tax Piece, Briefly
The short version is that this year genuinely favors buying equipment. Current federal tax rules permanently restored 100 percent bonus depreciation for qualifying property placed in service after January 19, 2025, and Section 179 got more generous too, with a 2.56 million dollar deduction limit for 2026 and a phase-out that doesn’t start until 4.09 million dollars in purchases. For the overwhelming majority of small businesses, that’s not a ceiling anyone’s bumping into.
How those two provisions interact with your specific income, entity structure, and any carryforwards from prior years is genuinely a conversation for your CPA, not this blog. What matters here is simpler. The deduction changes the tax treatment. It doesn’t change the price tag.
The Question TEVA Actually Answers
A write-off tells you something about the tax treatment. It doesn’t tell you what happens to your checking account in November. That’s the piece we look at, and it starts with your books rather than the equipment.
Start with cash. Then look at what’s already spoken for. Payroll is coming. Payroll taxes are coming. Debt payments aren’t moving just because you found a truck you like. And if 80,000 dollars is sitting in accounts receivable, that money can’t help you make a down payment today, no matter how good it looks on the balance sheet.
Then look ahead. A business heading into its strongest quarter can absorb a purchase differently than one about to enter its slow season. Year-to-date profitability tells you whether the deduction is even worth much this year in the first place. None of these are tax questions. They’re cash questions, and they’re the ones that actually decide whether this purchase makes sense right now, regardless of what the deduction is worth on paper.
This is the same review we’d want to do before any major purchase, tax incentive or not. The write-off just tends to be the thing that gets a business owner to pick up the phone before signing rather than after.
Why the Order Matters
A business that already knows the answers to those questions can move fast and confidently when a good deal shows up. A business that’s guessing tends to find out the hard way, usually mid-December, when there’s no room left to adjust.
There’s also a timing detail that matters for the deduction itself. The equipment has to be placed in service this year, not simply ordered or invoiced, so a purchase rushed through during the last week of December to catch the write-off can still miss it entirely if it isn’t actually up and running by December 31.
We see the version of this that goes sideways more often than you’d think. An owner buys the equipment in November, feeling good about the deduction, and by the second week of December realizes payroll and a loan payment are both due the same week the new equipment payment kicks in. Nothing about the purchase itself was a bad call. Nobody checked the calendar first.
Picture two businesses eyeing the same 45,000 dollar delivery van in November. The first one has current books, knows its year-to-date profit almost to the dollar, and knows three invoices are due from a slow-paying customer in the next two weeks. The second business is going on instinct and a general sense that things have been decent this year. Same van. Same price. Two completely different financial positions.
That’s the whole reason this conversation belongs with your bookkeeper before it belongs with your CPA. Your CPA can tell you what the purchase does to next April’s return. Only your current books can tell you what it does to your December.
Buy It Because the Business Needs It
Buy the truck because the business needs it and the numbers support it. Let your CPA tell you how to take advantage of the tax treatment. That order can save you from spending November celebrating a deduction and January wondering where the cash went.