Month: November 2025

By David M. Kopyc, CRPC®

Integrating year-end investment planning into your retirement strategy is crucial for maximizing savings, minimizing tax liabilities and ensuring long-term financial security. The end of the year offers a critical window to review progress, make adjustments and use key tax-efficient strategies that align with your retirement goals.

Effective retirement planning is a continuous process, not a one-time event. The close of the calendar year provides a natural checkpoint to assess your financial health and determine if you are on track to meet your retirement objectives. This review should encompass your entire financial picture—from investment portfolios and savings rates to tax strategies and estate plans.

Maximize Retirement Plan Contributions: One of the most impactful year-end moves is maximizing contributions to tax-advantaged retirement accounts.

Employer plans (401(k), 403(b), etc.): Confirm you have contributed up to the annual limit. For 2025, this limit is $23,500, with an additional $7,500 catch-up contribution for individuals age 50 and older. If you haven’t reached the maximum, consider increasing contributions for the remaining pay periods of the year.

Individual Retirement Accounts: You can contribute to a traditional or Roth IRA until the tax filing deadline in April of the following year, but making the contribution by year-end can still be beneficial for planning purposes. The 2025 contribution limit is $7,000, with an extra $1,000 catch-up for those 50 and older.

Health Savings Accounts: If eligible, maximize your HSA contributions. HSAs offer a “triple tax advantage”—tax-deductible contributions, tax-free growth and tax-free withdrawals for qualified medical expenses—making them a powerful tool for covering healthcare costs in retirement.

By Kevin M. Hedley, MS, CPA, PFS

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), enacted in July 2025, represents a sweeping overhaul of U.S. business taxation, with significant implications for federal and state tax planning, and corporate investment strategy. This article is a brief summary of some of the key business tax law updates introduced by OBBBA, focusing on the most impactful provisions for corporations and their practical implications.

100% Bonus Depreciation Made Permanent

OBBBA permanently restores 100% bonus depreciation for qualified property. This allows businesses to immediately deduct the full cost of most tangible property placed in service after January 19, 2025. This provision, which had been scheduled to phase down under prior law, now provides a powerful incentive for capital investment by enabling immediate expensing rather than requiring depreciation over several years. The law also introduces a transitional 40% bonus depreciation rate for property placed in service in the first tax year ending after January 19, 2025, if the taxpayer elects this treatment.

New 100% Deduction for Qualified Production Property (QPP)

A major innovation is the creation of Section 168(n), which allows a 100% immediate deduction for certain nonresidential real property used in qualified production activities—primarily manufacturing, production, or refining of tangible personal property. This deduction is available for property placed in service after January 19, 2025, and before January 1, 2031. The provision is elective and subject to recapture if the property ceases to be used in a qualified production activity within 10 years. This is a significant departure from the traditional 39-year straight-line depreciation for nonresidential real property, and it is designed to spur domestic manufacturing investment.