The One Big Beautiful Bill Act: what Texas business owners actually need to know.

On July 4, 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) became law. Buried in a very large bill are a handful of changes that directly affect how much tax your business pays, what you can deduct, and, in a couple of cases, a compliance headache that just disappeared.

Most of what you’ve read about it is either written for accountants or written for Washington. This is written for the person actually running the company. Here are the six changes that matter, what each one means in dollars, and what to do about it before year-end.

The short version

1. 100% bonus depreciation is back, permanently. Write off qualifying equipment and property in full, the first year.
2. R&D costs are fully deductible again. The rule that forced you to spread software and engineering costs over five years is gone, and some businesses may be owed a refund.
3. The SALT cap jumped from $10,000 to $40,000. For most Houston homeowners, that’s real money back.
4. The 20% pass-through (QBI) deduction is now permanent. The break that was set to expire at the end of 2025 didn’t.
5. The 1099-K “$600 rule” is dead. The threshold reverted to $20,000 and 200 transactions.
6. The BOI report you were dreading is gone for U.S. companies, at least.

Let’s take them one at a time.

1. 100% bonus depreciation is back, and this time it’s permanent

If your business buys equipment, vehicles, machinery, or improves a building, this is the big one.

Under OBBBA, you can once again deduct 100% of the cost of most qualifying business property in the first year it’s placed in service, instead of depreciating it slowly over many years. This applies to property acquired and placed in service after January 19, 2025, and unlike the last version of this rule, it’s permanent. No phase-down, no expiration to plan around.

“Qualifying property” generally means assets with a tax life of 20 years or less: equipment, machinery, most vehicles, off-the-shelf software, and qualified improvement property (interior improvements to commercial buildings).

One trap to know about: property you locked in under a written binding contract signed before January 20, 2025 generally doesn’t qualify for the new 100% rate. Timing matters.

Why this is a big deal in Houston: for capital-intensive businesses like energy and oilfield services, real estate, logistics, and manufacturing, this changes the math on every major purchase. Buy the rig, the fleet, the building improvement, or the equipment this year, and you may be able to expense the entire cost against this year’s income rather than waiting a decade to feel the benefit.

If you own real estate, pair this with a cost segregation study, which breaks a building into components with shorter tax lives, many of which now qualify for an immediate 100% write-off. On a Houston-area commercial or multifamily property, that can move a meaningful amount of tax off your current-year bill.

2. R&D costs are fully deductible again (and you may be owed a refund)

For three years, a TCJA-era rule forced businesses to capitalize and amortize their research and development costs, spreading the deduction over five years instead of taking it immediately. For any company doing software development, engineering, or product design, that quietly inflated tax bills and drained cash.

OBBBA created a new Section 174A that restores the old, sensible treatment: domestic R&D expenses are immediately and fully deductible again, for tax years beginning after December 31, 2024. It’s permanent, with no sunset. (Research performed outside the U.S. still has to be amortized over 15 years, so where the work happens matters.)

There’s also a retroactive piece. Smaller businesses, those with $31 million or less in average annual gross receipts, were given a limited window to apply this treatment retroactively to 2022, 2023, and 2024 by amending prior returns and recovering tax already paid. The election deadline is the earlier of July 6, 2026, or three years from when you originally filed each return, so don’t assume the refund is off the table (or still on it) without checking where your filing dates land.

Who this hits in our client base: technology companies, engineering and design firms, energy operators with in-house technical work, and manufacturers. If you’ve been carrying capitalized R&D on your returns since 2022, it’s worth a conversation. Between the go-forward deduction and any refund still available under the retroactive window, there is real money on the table for some businesses.

3. The SALT cap quadrupled from $10,000 to $40,000

Since 2018, the deduction for state and local taxes (SALT) on your federal return has been capped at $10,000. OBBBA raises that cap to $40,000 for the 2025 through 2029 tax years. The higher cap phases down for very high earners (it begins to shrink once income passes $500,000), and it’s scheduled to revert to $10,000 in 2030.

Why this matters specifically for Texans: Texas has no personal state income tax, so the SALT deduction here isn’t about income tax at all. It’s about property taxes and sales tax. And with Houston-area property values, hitting the old $10,000 cap was easy; a single home’s property tax bill often blew past it on its own. Raising the ceiling to $40,000 means many Houston-area owners can once again deduct the full weight of their property taxes.

If you’re a business owner who also owes income tax in other states (common for our private equity, fund, and multistate clients), there’s an additional layer worth reviewing: pass-through entity tax (PTET) elections in those states, which can work around the cap entirely at the entity level.

4. The 20% pass-through deduction (199A / QBI) is now permanent

If your business is a partnership, S-corp, or sole proprietorship, you’ve likely been taking the Section 199A qualified business income (QBI) deduction: up to 20% of your business income, deducted before tax. It was scheduled to expire at the end of 2025.

OBBBA made it permanent. It also added a $400 minimum deduction for taxpayers with at least $1,000 of QBI. The income thresholds where the deduction’s limitations phase in are, for 2025, $394,600 for married couples filing jointly and $197,300 for all other filers.

This one is less “new money” and more “certainty.” A deduction you were about to lose is now a permanent part of the code, which changes how you should think about entity structure and long-term planning.

5. The 1099-K “$600 rule” is dead

If you take payments through platforms like PayPal, Venmo, Stripe, or a marketplace, you may remember the panic about getting a 1099-K for as little as $600 in transactions. OBBBA repealed that.

The reporting threshold reverted to the old, higher dual test: payment platforms only have to issue a 1099-K when your transactions exceed $20,000 and 200 transactions in a year. The IRS confirmed this in official FAQs (Fact Sheet 2025-08) in October 2025.

This mostly affects smaller businesses, contractors, and anyone selling through online marketplaces. It doesn’t change what income is taxable; it changes what gets reported to the IRS on a form. (Your income is still your income, form or no form.)

6. The BOI report you were dreading? For U.S. companies, it’s gone

The Corporate Transparency Act required most small businesses to file a Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) report with FinCEN disclosing who owns and controls the company. It caused enormous confusion through 2024 and early 2025, with deadlines that kept moving.

In March 2025, FinCEN issued an interim final rule that removed the BOI reporting requirement for U.S.-created companies and U.S. persons entirely. The rule redefined “reporting company” to cover only entities formed under foreign law that register to do business in the United States. If your LLC or corporation was formed in Texas (or any U.S. state), you are no longer required to file.

Two important caveats:

• This is an interim final rule. It isn’t fully finalized, and it could change. We’re watching it.
• Some states are creating their own beneficial-ownership rules. Federal relief doesn’t automatically mean state relief.

What this means for you, by industry

• Energy & oilfield services: Bonus depreciation and R&D expensing are the headline. Every equipment purchase and in-house technical project just got more tax-efficient. And if you operate low-volume gas wells, see our breakdown of the record 2026 marginal well credit.
• Real estate: 100% bonus depreciation + cost segregation is the combination to model on every acquisition and improvement this year.
• Private equity, funds & portfolio companies: QBI permanence and multistate SALT/PTET planning across the portfolio are where the value is.
• High-net-worth individuals & family offices: The SALT cap increase is immediate relief; the QBI and depreciation changes flow through your pass-through holdings.
• Professional services & smaller businesses: QBI certainty, the 1099-K reversion, and BOI relief clean up three separate headaches at once.

The bottom line

OBBBA is not a footnote. It permanently restored two of the most valuable deductions a business can take (bonus depreciation and R&D expensing), quadrupled the SALT cap, locked in the 20% pass-through deduction, and erased two compliance burdens. Some of these save you money automatically. Others, the R&D refund especially, reward you only if you act.

At RSK, tax isn’t an April event. We do year-round planning that looks across your tax, insurance, and operations together, because a depreciation decision, an entity decision, and a risk decision are usually the same decision. If you want to know exactly what OBBBA means for your numbers, that’s the conversation to have now, not next spring.

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This article is general information, not tax advice, and reflects federal tax law as of mid-2026. Tax outcomes depend on your specific facts, and some provisions (notably the BOI/Corporate Transparency Act rule) remain subject to change. Talk to a qualified advisor before acting.

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