Incentive stock options only get ISO treatment up to $100,000 of grant-date value that first becomes exercisable in a calendar year. Above that line the excess is a nonqualified option, taxed as wages the moment you exercise, and an acquisition can push a whole grant over it.
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The One Big Beautiful Bill Act set the federal estate and gift tax exemption at $15 million per person for 2026 and removed the sunset that was going to cut it roughly in half. For most families that means no federal estate tax, but the planning that mattered before still matters.
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Massachusetts adds a 4% surtax on top of its 5% flat tax for every dollar of taxable income above $1,107,750 in 2026. A single big year, a business sale, or an equity vest can trigger it, and married couples can no longer file separately to dodge it.
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The HSA is the only account in the tax code with a triple tax break: deductible going in, tax-free growth, and tax-free withdrawals for medical costs. Fund it, invest it, leave it alone, and after 65 it works like a traditional IRA with a medical superpower.
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The self-employed health insurance deduction is alive and well for S corp owners, but only when the premiums run through payroll and land in Box 1 of the W-2. Here is the Notice 2008-1 routing that makes $18,000 of premiums 100% deductible, and the traps that quietly kill it.
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A couple finishes paying for a degree and $32,000 is still sitting in the my529 account. SECURE 2.0 lets it move into the graduate's Roth IRA, $7,500 a year with no income limits, if the account passes a 15-year test and two state-tax catches.
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A tech employee sells ether at a $24,000 loss and buys it back before lunch, keeping a deduction a stock investor would lose. Why IRC §1091 doesn't reach crypto in 2026, what a harvest is worth, and the bill drafted to reach back to January 1.
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A landlord pulls $180,000 out of a duplex and the lender calls the whole payment deductible. The tracing rules of Treas. Reg. §1.163-8T disagree. Where each dollar has to go, and the $5,400 mistake in one worked refi.
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A Lehi engineer buys a rental near campus and wonders if her longtime software still cuts it. The answer hangs on three numbers: household income, average guest stay, and the distance to a sale. Where the line sits, with the 2026 math.
Read postThree quotes, three numbers, none of them wrong. The 2025 fee-study averages ($228 with an EA, $280 with a CPA), what each schedule adds, and the one fee structure that should end the conversation.
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The refund is arithmetic, not negotiation, and nobody can enlarge it from the same facts. But corrected RSU basis, Utah's 20% EITC match, and the new OBBBA deductions are different facts. Where the real money hides.
Read postOne flat rate, a disappearing credit standing in for the standard deduction, and an extension that is automatic for the paperwork but not the payment. Utah's income tax in one pass, with the 2025 and 2026 numbers.
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