Tax Planning & Projection

Almost everyone believes tax planning is something that happens in a room they'll never be in — a wealthy family, a clever accountant, a strategy with a wink in it. The word itself sounds a little suspicious, as if planning your taxes and cheating on them were cousins. So most people do the opposite of planning: they file in April, take whatever number the software gives them, and hope it's not too bad. This lesson is about setting down that belief, because it's costing you money you're allowed to keep.

Here is the reassurance up front, before any mechanics. Tax planning is legal, ordinary, and available to you — it is nothing more than deciding *when* and *in what form* your dollars show up, so more of them land in a cheaper year or a lower bracket. The wealthy plan more only because they have more dollars to move; the *moves* are the same ones a rideshare driver, a retired widow, or a two-teacher household can make. And planning is the honest opposite of cheating: it changes the timing and the form of income, never hides it. If a 'strategy' needs a secret, it isn't planning — it's evasion, and we'll name it plainly later so you can walk away from it.

You've spent the last two levels learning to *file* — to read the forms and put the right numbers in the right boxes for a year that already happened. Planning is the other direction in time: looking *forward* at a year that hasn't happened yet, while you can still change it. The map below lays out the whole path, and the four people we'll follow through it.

We follow four people, on purpose, because planning is not one income level's game. Priya and Raj Malhotra are a high-income couple in Seattle — a software engineer with stock and a self-employed consultant — and they show the levers at the top, where the next dollar is expensive. Marcus Bell is self-employed in Atlanta, and his cash-basis business gives him a timing dial most people don't have. Eleanor Whitfield is 71, retired in Phoenix, living on Social Security and a pension — and she's sitting in one of the most valuable planning windows there is, if she knows to use it. Daniel and Sofia Reyes are a teacher and a nurse in San Antonio who give generously to their church and, under the old rules, got nothing back for it. Their four situations cover the whole map.

Every planning decision rests on one idea you already met when you learned about brackets, seen now from the other side. Back then, marginal versus effective rate was a fact to understand. In planning, it becomes a lever — the single most useful number you own.

Your marginal rate is the price of your next dollar — the rate the very next dollar of income would be taxed at, and the rate the next dollar of deduction would save you. Your effective rate is the average — total tax divided by total income, always lower, because your first dollars were taxed in the cheap brackets. When you plan, you almost never care about the average. You care about the price at the edge, because that's where every decision happens: the next dollar earned, deferred, deducted, or converted.

Watch it on Priya and Raj. Their income lands them with about $240,000 of taxable income for 2026, filing jointly. Run the brackets and their tax is about $42,796 — an effective rate near 17.8%. But their marginal rate is 24%: their taxable income sits inside the 24% bracket, which for a married couple in 2026 runs from $211,400 to $403,550. Those two numbers, 17.8% and 24%, describe the same couple, and planning lives entirely in the gap between them.

Why the marginal number is the one that matters: it prices every move they could make. A dollar Priya routes into her pre-tax 401(k) doesn't save her the 17.8% average — it saves her 24 cents, her marginal rate, because it comes off the very top of her income. The two of them maxing their workplace 401(k)s — up to $24,500 each in 2026 — shelters about $49,000 of income, deferring roughly $11,760 in federal tax at 24%. That is the whole game in one sentence: a deduction is worth your marginal rate, so the higher your bracket, the more every deduction is worth to you.

This reframes the classic raise question, too. "If my raise pushes me into the next bracket, do I lose money?" No — only the dollars *inside* the new bracket pay the higher rate, never your whole income. A raise always leaves you with more. What planning does is decide, at the margin, whether a given dollar has to show up *now* at today's price, or can wait for a cheaper one. Everything that follows — timing, bunching, filling a bracket — is a way of moving dollars to where the marginal price is lower.

The first tool is timing: choosing which tax year a dollar of income or a dollar of deduction belongs to. Income tax is figured one calendar year at a time, and each year's brackets reset. So if you have any control over *when* a dollar arrives, you have a choice about which year's brackets it climbs. The rule of thumb is short: push income toward your lower-rate years and deductions toward your higher-rate years.

Marcus has more of this control than most people, because he's self-employed and reports on the cash method — his income counts in the year he's *paid*, and his expenses count in the year he *pays* them. That makes the calendar a dial. Suppose this year his freelance design work takes off and his Schedule C net hits about $95,000 — a breakout year — while next year looks like his usual $62,000. Where do those two years leave him?

Same person, same work, two different prices on the next dollar: 22% in the breakout year, 12% in the normal year. That ten-point gap is the opportunity. His breakout-year taxable income sits about $7,350 above the top of the 12% bracket, so there's roughly that much room to shift. In late December Marcus has invoices he could send now or hold until January. If he defers about $10,000 of December billing into January, he shaves his breakout-year taxable income back toward the 12% line — moving that ~$7,350 out of the 22% band into next year's 12% band and pocketing the ten-point gap on it: about $700 in federal income tax, for doing nothing but waiting two weeks to hit "send." (The $10,000 of billing becomes a bit less than $10,000 of *taxable* income once his self-employed deductions apply — which is why it's ~$700, not a flat 10% of $10,000.)

One honest note on the math: Marcus owes self-employment tax (15.3% of most of his net) in *either* year, because that rate doesn't change between years. So timing plays only the income-tax bracket gap — the 10 points — not the SE tax. That's still about $700 for a two-week delay, but it's worth knowing exactly which lever you're pulling.

What about employees, who can't send their own invoices? They have fewer income-timing levers, but not zero. The familiar one is "should I take the bonus in December or January?" If you expect a lower-bracket year ahead (a planned leave, a job change, a spouse stopping work), and you have any say, landing the bonus in the cheaper year is the same move Marcus makes. More often you can't control the bonus date — so the employee's real income-timing levers are the ones that *reduce* this year's income: a bigger pre-tax 401(k) or HSA contribution, deferred compensation if the employer offers it, and the timing of a Roth conversion or a stock sale (those last two are coming up). The tool is the same; only the handles differ by how you're paid.

The mirror image of timing income is timing deductions — and the rule flips: pull deductions into your higher-rate years, because a deduction is worth your marginal rate, so it's worth more in the year that rate is higher.

Back to Marcus and his breakout year. He needs a new camera and a computer upgrade for the design work — about $4,000 of gear he's going to buy anyway. A deduction is worth your marginal rate, so buying it in his 22% year rather than his 12% year captures the same ten-point gap. Because his equipment is a *business* deduction — it also shrinks his self-employment tax and his QBI deduction, so it trims a little less than a flat $4,000 of taxable income — the real timing gain is about $300: same purchase, same gear, just bought against the more expensive year, for a few hundred dollars he'd otherwise leave on the table.

For employees, the pre-tax retirement and HSA contributions are both an income-timing lever and a deduction-timing lever at once — a dollar into a pre-tax 401(k) or an HSA lowers this year's taxable income at this year's marginal rate. If you know next year will be leaner, front-loading those contributions into a high-rate year captures the deduction where it's worth most. This is why 'plan at the margin' and 'time your deductions' are really the same habit seen twice.

There's a catch worth stating now, because it sets up the next section. Most people take the standard deduction — a flat amount ($16,100 single, $32,200 married filing jointly, $24,150 head of household in 2026) that you get whether or not you have any deductible costs. If your itemizable costs in a given year don't add up to more than the standard deduction, timing them into that year buys you *nothing*, because you'd take the standard deduction anyway. That's the trap the Reyes fell into — and the fix is a tool of its own.

Daniel and Sofia Reyes give about $12,000 a year to their church and a few causes they care about. For years they assumed that giving lowered their taxes. It didn't — not by a cent. Here's why, and here's the move that fixes it.

The Reyes take the standard deduction because their itemizable costs don't clear it. In San Antonio they have no state income tax, so their deductible state-and-local taxes are mostly property tax — call it $7,000 — plus about $10,000 of mortgage interest, for $17,000 of non-charitable itemized costs. Add their giving and you'd think they'd be over the top. But 2026 added a wrinkle: itemized charitable gifts are now deductible only to the extent they exceed 0.5% of your adjusted gross income — a floor. On their roughly $129,700 AGI, that floor is about $649, so their $12,000 of giving counts as $11,351 of itemized deduction. Their total itemized: $17,000 + $11,351 = $28,352 — which is *under* the $32,200 standard deduction. So they take the standard deduction, and every dollar of their $12,000 gift bought them zero extra deduction.

Bunching is the fix. Instead of giving $12,000 every year and clearing nothing, they give two years' worth — $24,000 — in a single year, then give nothing (from their own pocket) the next. Watch what that does:

• Bunch year: $17,000 of other itemized costs + ($24,000 − $649 floor) = $40,352 of itemized deductions. That clears the $32,200 standard deduction, so they itemize.
• Off year: $17,000 of costs, no giving from pocket → under $32,200, so they take the $32,200 standard deduction.
• Two-year total: $40,352 (bunch, itemized) + $32,200 (off, standard) = $72,552 — versus $32,200 + $32,200 = $64,400 if they'd just taken the standard deduction both years.

Bunching lifted their two-year deductions by about $8,152 — the amount the bunch-year itemized total beats the standard deduction it replaced. At their 12% marginal rate, that's roughly $978 of tax saved over the two years (about $489 a year) that they were leaving on the table before. They give the same $24,000 either way; they just stopped wasting the deduction.

Two 2026 details make this sharper. First, the 0.5% floor is charged once per year you claim charity — so bunching means they swallow the $649 floor once instead of twice ($1,297) over the two years. Concentrating gifts doesn't just clear the standard deduction; it also saves a floor haircut. Second, how do they keep their church funded in the 'off' year if they've given nothing? With a donor-advised fund (DAF) — a charitable account they fund with the whole $24,000 in the bunch year (taking the full deduction then), which then sends grants to their church steadily across both years. The tax benefit lands when they fund the DAF; the charity feels no gap.

Timing shifts a dollar from an expensive year to a cheap one. Bracket management is the same idea aimed at a year that is *already* cheap — a low-income year you deliberately fill up with income realized on purpose, at the low rate, before a more expensive future arrives. The classic phrase is "filling a bracket": pull just enough income into this year to reach the top of a low bracket, and not one dollar past it.

Eleanor Whitfield is sitting in exactly such a window and may not know it. She's 71, retired, living on $32,000 of Social Security and a $28,000 pension. Required minimum distributions from her traditional IRA don't begin until she's 73, so for now her income is unusually low — and once RMDs start, they'll stack on top of her Social Security and pension permanently. This gap is her cheap window, and the tool for it is a Roth conversion: moving money from her traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, paying ordinary tax on it now, so it grows tax-free forever after, throws off no future RMDs, and passes to her heirs tax-free (the full mechanics are Lesson 24).

Start with the clean version. Eleanor's deductions are generous: the $16,100 standard deduction, plus the $2,050 additional standard deduction for being 65+, plus the new $6,000 senior bonus deduction (a break from the 2025 tax law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBBA, that runs 2025–2028) — $24,150 in all. After the Social Security math, her taxable income sits around $16,850, deep in the 12% bracket, which for a single filer in 2026 runs up to $50,400. On its face, that looks like about $33,550 of room to convert at 12%. If only it were that simple.

This is the whole point of planning at the margin made vivid: the bracket on the table is not the rate you actually pay. The honest way to size Eleanor's conversion is against her real marginal cost, not the headline 12%. It's still worth doing — filling the bracket now, while the senior bonus deduction still exists (it expires after 2028) and before RMDs and a fuller benefit push her toward 22%, moves IRA money to tax-free Roth at a rate she may never see again. But the case rests on the Roth's long-run tax-free growth, the shrinking of future RMDs, and the estate benefit — *not* on a mythical 10-point rate arbitrage the torpedo mostly eats. Model the real number before you convert; Lesson 24 walks the full interaction, including Medicare's IRMAA premium surcharges, which sit far above Eleanor's income but bite a bigger conversion.

Every move so far — timing, bunching, filling a bracket — needs one thing to work: a rough picture of *this* year and *next* year, side by side, before either is over. That picture is a tax projection, and it's the humble worksheet at the center of all planning. You don't need software or a professional to start; you need last year's return as a template, an estimate of this year's income, and a guess at next year's. The goal isn't a to-the-dollar forecast. It's to see the shape — which year is the high one, where your marginal rate sits, which threshold you're near — while you can still act.

Here is Marcus's, built from his breakout year and his expected normal year. Read it as the planning artifact it is: two columns, income down to the marginal rate, and the decision it points to.

The worksheet earns its keep by making the timing decision obvious. Marcus's 2026 breakout column shows about $95,000 of net, roughly $57,750 of taxable income, a 22% marginal rate, and a total tax around $20,840 (income tax plus self-employment tax). His 2027 column shows his usual $62,000, about $33,216 taxable, a 12% marginal rate, and roughly $12,498 of total tax. Laid out that way, the play chooses itself: defer late-2026 invoices into 2027 and buy the 2026 gear he needs in December — shift income down to the 12% year and pull deductions up into the 22% year. Without the projection he'd never see the two rates were different; with it, the ~$1,000 of savings is just sitting there.

The same worksheet is what tells Eleanor to convert now rather than later, and what tells Priya and Raj whether a big stock vest will tip them over the $250,000 line where the 3.8% investment tax begins. Projecting doesn't require their incomes — it requires the habit. Once a year, before December, sketch this year and next. It's the difference between planning and hoping.

Most years, a projection only has to look one year ahead. Right now it pays to look further, because the 2025 tax law — the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — built several breaks with expiration dates, and a break that ends on a known date is a planning input. If a deduction is guaranteed only through a certain year, a dollar that can use it is worth more before the cliff than after.

There are two separate cliffs, and it's worth keeping them straight:

• The end of 2028 — the Schedule 1-A deductions. Four new breaks live only through tax year 2028: no tax on tips (up to $25,000), no tax on overtime (the premium half, up to $12,500, or $25,000 joint), the car-loan interest deduction (up to $10,000 on a new U.S.-assembled vehicle), and Eleanor's $6,000 senior bonus deduction. All four vanish after 2028. For Aisha Bello, whose income is mostly tips, that means the years 2026–2028 are structurally cheaper than 2029 will be. For Eleanor, it's one more reason her Roth-conversion window is *now*: her deductions shrink by $6,000 the moment the senior bonus expires.
• 2030 — the $40,000 SALT cap reverts. The deduction for state and local taxes is capped at $40,400 in 2026 (it inches up about 1% a year), and that elevated cap holds through 2029 before snapping back to $10,000 in 2030. For a high-tax-state itemizer like Nina Nguyen, the years through 2029 are when a big property-tax or state-income-tax payment is worth deducting in full; after that the cap collapses. Timing a large, controllable SALT payment before the 2030 reversion can matter.

Everything in this lesson can be turned into a mistake by overusing it, so the most important beat is a brake. The oldest rule in tax planning is: plan the tax, but don't let the tax tail wag the dog. A deduction is never a discount — it saves you your marginal rate, not the whole dollar. Spending real money you didn't need to spend, to capture a deduction worth a fraction of it, is a loss dressed up as a strategy.

Marcus's camera makes the point. Buying $4,000 of gear he genuinely needs, in his 22% year, is smart timing — it saves him about $880. But buying $4,000 of gear he *doesn't* need, just for the deduction, doesn't save him $4,000; it saves him $880 and *costs* him $3,120 of cash he'd otherwise keep. "It's a write-off" has bankrupted more small businesses than almost any other sentence. The deduction is a discount on things you were going to buy anyway; it is never a reason to buy.

The same brake applies to the bigger moves. A Roth conversion that's genuinely cheap is worth doing; converting so much that you punch through a bracket, trip the Social Security torpedo hard, or cross an IRMAA cliff can cost more than it saves. Bunching is worth it if you were giving anyway; giving *more* than you wanted, to itemize, is the tail wagging the dog. The test is always the same: would you do this if there were no tax angle at all? If the underlying move is sound, let the tax savings sweeten it. If the only reason to do it is the tax, stop.

That last filter matters most here, because the space around tax planning is full of people selling the thing planning is not. The line is bright and worth memorizing: legal planning changes the timing and the form of income; it never hides income. If a strategy needs a secret — backdated paperwork, a hidden account, a story you'd be afraid to tell an auditor — it isn't planning, it's evasion, and the liability lands on you, not the promoter who sold it.

The tells cluster into three shapes. First, "aggressive planning" that is really cheating — a preparer or "strategist" who invents deductions you didn't incur, backdates documents to move income, or writes off personal spending as business. That's not a gray area; it's fraud with a spreadsheet. Second, abusive-trust and "pure trust" schemes, a perennial on the IRS Dirty Dozen: you're told that funneling your income through a special trust makes it legally invisible to tax. It doesn't — you still control the money and still owe the tax, and the scheme's paperwork is evidence against you. Third, and subtlest, the promoter whose 'tax savings' drive a genuinely bad decision — an expensive insurance product, a syndicated 'conservation easement,' an off-shore structure — sold on the tax angle so you don't notice the underlying deal is a loser. Each of these fails the one-line filter from the last section: you would never do it if the tax break weren't dangled in front of you.

Maybe you're reading this after the fact — you never projected anything and got a surprise bill, you gave for years and only now learn you got nothing back for it, or you paid someone for a 'strategy' that turned out to be smoke. Set the self-blame down first. Planning is genuinely invisible until someone shows it to you; the tax code doesn't send a letter reminding you that December is your last chance to shift a dollar, and the people who sell bad strategies are practiced at looking trustworthy. You didn't fail a test everyone else was passing. Here's what you can still do, all of it ordinary:

• Start next year now. The single most valuable planning move is a projection made *before* December, and it's available to you every year for free. This year's surprise is next year's plan — you've already learned the tools.
• A missed move is usually a next-year move, not a lost one. Didn't bunch this year? Bunch next year. Missed a cheap conversion window? The window is often several years wide. Very little in planning is truly one-and-done; most of it simply resumes.
• If a bad return was filed, you can fix it. A return built on a sham deduction or a scheme can be corrected by amending (Form 1040-X, Lesson 34). Coming forward and fixing it is almost always far better — and cheaper — than waiting for the IRS to find it, and it stops penalties and interest from growing.
• If you were sold a scheme, you're a victim, not a co-conspirator — but act. Stop using it, unwind what you can, amend the affected returns, and report the promoter (Form 14242). Keep every document. A person who bought a bad product and then corrected course is treated very differently from one who kept riding it.
• Get one honest projection. A single session with a fee-only CPA or Enrolled Agent who will actually run your next year — not sell you a product — often pays for itself and turns a recurring surprise into a solved problem.

Planning is one of the few tax tasks where paying a good professional often earns its fee back several times — but the *kind* of professional matters enormously. The honest ladder, free to paid:

1. Do a projection yourself first. Last year's return plus this year's income estimate gets you most of the way. The free IRS Tax Withholding Estimator (irs.gov/W4App) doubles as a rough full-year tax estimator, and the IRS Interactive Tax Assistant answers specific 'does this apply to me' questions at no cost.
2. Free preparation help — VITA and TCE. IRS-certified volunteers prepare returns free for lower-income filers, people with disabilities, older adults (TCE specializes in retirement and Social Security questions — Eleanor's world), and limited-English speakers. They can sanity-check whether a move like bunching or a small conversion makes sense for you.
3. A fee-only CPA or Enrolled Agent who *projects*. For the real planning value, you want a professional paid for their time (a flat or hourly fee), not on commission for selling a product. Ask directly: 'Will you run a multi-year projection and tell me the moves?' A good one models the Roth conversion, the bunching, the bracket, and the thresholds — and tells you when *not* to do something.
4. The Taxpayer Advocate Service (Form 911). An independent office inside the IRS for when something has gone wrong — a scheme unwound into a mess, a notice you can't resolve through normal channels, or a genuine hardship. Free.
5. Low-Income Taxpayer Clinics (LITCs). Free or low-cost representation if a planning mistake or a bad preparer has turned into a dispute with the IRS.

"Isn't tax planning just for rich people?" No. The moves scale with income, but they work at every level — Marcus (self-employed), Eleanor (retired on a modest income), and the Reyes (a teacher and a nurse) all use them. The wealthy plan more only because they have more dollars to move. The habit — look ahead, plan at the margin — is free.

"Is planning the same as cheating?" No, and the line is bright: legal planning changes *when* income is taxed and *what form* it takes; it never hides income. If a strategy needs a secret, it's evasion. Everything in this lesson is written in the tax code for anyone to use.

"Should I take my bonus in December or January?" Only worth managing if the two years have different marginal rates — say you expect a lower-income year ahead. Then landing it in the cheaper year saves the bracket difference. If both years look the same, it doesn't matter, and most employers control the date anyway.

"I take the standard deduction — can I get any benefit from my charity?" Two ways. Up to $1,000 (single) or $2,000 (joint) of cash gifts is now deductible above the line even if you take the standard deduction. Beyond that, bunch several years of giving into one year (ideally through a donor-advised fund) so your itemized total clears the standard deduction that year.

"How much can I convert to Roth in a low year?" Enough to fill the low bracket — but price the *real* marginal rate, not the headline. If you're already on Social Security, the tax torpedo can make a '12% bracket' cost closer to 22% on the first chunk. Convert against a projection, and know the cheapest conversions happen before you claim Social Security.

"The OBBBA breaks expire in 2028 — does that change my timing?" Yes, if you can use them. Tips, overtime, the car-loan deduction, and the senior bonus deduction all end after 2028; the big SALT cap reverts in 2030. A dollar that can use one of those breaks is worth more before its cliff. Don't, however, build a permanent plan that only works while a temporary break lasts.

"Should I do something just to save on tax?" Almost never. A deduction saves your marginal rate, not the whole dollar — spending real money you didn't need to spend, to capture a fraction of it back, is a loss. Ask: would I do this if there were no tax angle? If not, don't.

"Do I need software or an accountant to plan?" No to start. Last year's return plus an income estimate is a real projection. Software and a good fee-only professional add precision and catch the interactions (Social Security, IRMAA, thresholds) — worth it once the numbers get bigger or a one-time event (a sale, a conversion, a windfall) is on the table.

"What's the single highest-value habit?" A once-a-year projection made before December, while you can still act. Everything else is a move you can only make if you saw the year coming.

Put the two everyday tools to work on real numbers. Enter your income and deductible costs for a year, and the tool shows your marginal rate, whether you'd itemize or take the standard deduction, and — the planning payoff — what happens if you *bunch* two years of your flexible deductions (charity) into one. It reports the tax you'd save and points to the timing move, exactly the way a projection worksheet would.

Load the Reyes first to watch bunching turn their wasted $12,000 of annual giving into about $978 of saved tax over two years. Then load Marcus to see the same engine price a timing decision — his 22% breakout year against his 12% normal year, and what shifting a dollar between them is worth. Then clear it and put in your own: the fastest way to know whether a planning move pays is to see your two years side by side before either one is over.

• Tax planning — legally arranging *when* your income is taxed and *what form* it takes, to lower the total over time. Changes timing and form; never hides income.
• Marginal rate (as a lever) — the rate on your next dollar; the price of earning one more, and the amount a deduction saves you. Every planning decision turns on this, not on the average.
• Effective rate — total tax ÷ total income; the average, always lower than the marginal rate. Useful for describing a year, rarely for deciding a move.
• Timing (income and deductions) — choosing which tax year a dollar of income or deduction falls in. Rule of thumb: push income to lower-rate years, deductions to higher-rate years.
• Constructive receipt — income counts the moment it's available to you, even untouched. You can defer by not billing yet; you can't defer money already in hand.
• Bunching — stacking several years' worth of a flexible deduction (usually charity) into one year so your itemized total clears the standard deduction that year; you take the standard deduction in the 'off' years.
• Donor-advised fund (DAF) — a charitable account you fund in a lump (taking the deduction now) that then grants to charities over later years; the vehicle that makes bunching painless. Excluded from the above-the-line non-itemizer deduction.
• 0.5% charitable floor — from 2026, itemized charitable gifts are deductible only above 0.5% of your AGI; the first slice isn't deductible. Charged once per year you claim charity — a reason to bunch.
• Above-the-line charitable deduction — from 2026, up to $1,000 (single) / $2,000 (joint) of cash gifts deductible even if you take the standard deduction; cash only, no DAFs, no floor.
• Bracket management / filling a bracket — deliberately realizing income (a Roth conversion or a gain) in a low-income year up to the top of a low bracket, and no further, to lock in the low rate before a more expensive future.
• Social Security tax torpedo — for someone already collecting benefits, extra income can make up to 85 cents of each benefit dollar newly taxable, so the real marginal rate on that income runs well above the headline bracket.
• Multi-year (tax) projection — a rough side-by-side estimate of this year and next (income → marginal rate → tax) made before year-end, so you can act while the year is still changeable.
• Tax avoidance vs. tax evasion — avoidance is legal planning (timing and form); evasion is illegally hiding income or inventing deductions. Avoidance you'd explain to an auditor; evasion needs a secret.
• OBBBA sunset cliffs — expiration dates in the 2025 law: the tips/overtime/car-loan/senior-bonus deductions end after 2028; the $40,000 SALT cap reverts to $10,000 in 2030. Dates that make multi-year timing matter.