You can write off 100% of new equipment again, permanently. The trap is what it does the day you sell

Good tax news for once: buy a new espresso machine, a rack of gym kit, salon stations or a treatment laser, and you can now knock 100% of the cost off this year's taxable profit, instead of dribbling it out over five or seven years. That is real cash left in the business at tax time. Here is exactly how it works in 2026, what it is worth on a real purchase, and the one thing that turns it from a smart move into an expensive mistake if you might sell.

So can you write the whole thing off in 2026? Yes.

Straight answer to the question you searched: yes. For most equipment a US business buys, put into use after 19 January 2025, you can deduct 100% of the cost in the first year rather than spreading it across the asset's life. This is called bonus depreciation, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed on 4 July 2025, made it permanent. There is no dollar cap and it is automatic: you get it unless you actively choose not to.

That matters because bonus depreciation was on its way out. Under the old rules it had already dropped to 60% for things bought in 2024 and was set to fall to 40% in 2025, 20% in 2026, and vanish in 2027. The new law reversed that and locked it back at 100% for good. So the write-off you may have thought you missed is back, and it is not going away this time.

What actually counts as "equipment"

Broad, and broader than most owners assume. Bonus depreciation covers tangible business property the IRS treats as lasting 20 years or less, which is nearly everything you buy to run the place:

• Cafes and restaurants: espresso machines, ovens, fridges, POS systems, furniture, the fit-out.
• Gyms and studios: cardio and strength kit, matting, sound and AV, reception fixtures.
• Salons and barbershops: styling stations, chairs, wash units, dryers, tools.
• Clinics and med-spas: lasers, treatment beds, diagnostic and imaging devices.

Two useful details. It applies to used gear too, not just new, as long as it is new to you. And it is separate from Section 179, another first-year write-off you may have heard of. Section 179 has a cap (raised to $2.5 million for 2025, shrinking only once you buy more than $4 million of kit in a year), which is so far above what a cafe or salon spends that it rarely matters to you. For an owner-operated business, bonus depreciation is the simpler tool: no cap, no income test, automatic.

What it is worth: a $30,000 fit-out

Numbers make it real. Say you spend $30,000 kitting out the business this year: new machines, furniture, the works.

• The old way (normal depreciation): you deduct that $30,000 slowly, a chunk each year for five to seven years. The tax relief trickles in.
• With 100% bonus depreciation: you deduct the full $30,000 this year.

If your marginal tax rate is, say, 24% (use your own, this is just to show the shape), deducting the whole $30,000 now cuts roughly $7,200 off your tax bill this year instead of a few hundred dollars a year for the better part of a decade.

Be honest with yourself about what that $7,200 is, though. It is not free money you would never otherwise get. You were always going to deduct that $30,000 eventually. Bonus depreciation just lets you take it all now rather than later. The real prize is timing and cash flow: the tax saving lands in your account this year, when you can use it, instead of drip-feeding in over seven. In a business run on tight cash flow, pulling that forward is genuinely worth having. Just do not mistake a faster refund for a discount on the gear.

The catch the flyer leaves off

Because it is a timing move, it borrows from your future self. Two things follow, and both matter.

You use up the deduction. Write off the whole machine this year and there is nothing left to depreciate next year, or the year after. So a big write-off now means higher taxable profit in the years ahead, when that machine would otherwise still be sheltering some of your income. If this year was lean and next year looks strong, you may actually be deducting in the wrong year.

It can wipe out your profit on paper. Bonus depreciation has no cap and can push your taxable profit to zero or into a loss. Handy for the tax bill. Not always handy for anything that reads your profit, which is the part almost nobody thinks about until it costs them.

Where it really bites: the day you sell

Here is the link no equipment salesman will mention, and it is the one that reaches your exit value.

A buyer does not value you on the deflated profit. When someone buys an owner-operated business, they work out its seller's discretionary earnings, the real profit a new owner keeps, and to get there they add depreciation back, because it is a paper cost, not cash out the door. So zeroing your profit with a big write-off does not lower the number a sharp buyer values you on. What it can do is make your tax return show a thin or negative bottom line, and a buyer or their bank who anchors on that headline profit, before the add-backs, quietly reads your business as weaker than it is. If your books do not clearly show the add-back, you argue your own price down in due diligence.

And the write-off comes back as tax when you sell the assets. This is called depreciation recapture. When you sell equipment you fully expensed, the IRS treats the gain, up to the amount you wrote off, as ordinary income, taxed at your normal rate (up to 37%), not the lower capital-gains rate. So the deduction you grabbed at 24% can be clawed back at a higher rate on the way out. You did not escape the tax. You moved it to the sale.

None of this makes bonus depreciation bad. It makes it a tool with a right and a wrong time. Reinvesting and keeping the business for years? Take the deduction, put the saved cash to work. Planning to sell inside a year or two? Talk to your accountant before you front-load deductions, because a clean, healthy profit is worth more to a buyer than a maxed-out write-off, and you would rather not hand them a recapture bill to negotiate over.