A lot of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in 2025 but was scheduled to take effect later. 2026 is the year several of those provisions actually land on your return. Here is what moved, and what it means if your income comes from content.
Charitable giving got meaningfully worse
Three changes at once, and they compound. Itemizers can now only deduct charitable contributions to the extent they exceed 0.5% of adjusted gross income — so on $500,000 of AGI, the first $2,500 of giving does nothing. Taxpayers in the top bracket have their benefit capped at 35 cents per dollar instead of 37. And non-itemizers gain a new deduction, but a small one: up to $1,000 single, $2,000 joint.
For a creator who gives steadily every year, this quietly shaves value off every gift. The standard response is bunching — concentrating two or three years of giving into one so the floor gets cleared decisively rather than eating a slice annually. Donor-advised funds are the usual mechanism.
If you raise money on stream, this interacts badly with how most charity fundraisers are structured. That is its own article, and it is the one I would read first.
The SALT cap is $40,400 for 2026
Up substantially, and genuinely significant if you are a creator in California, New York, or New Jersey. It also has a second-order effect people miss: a bigger SALT deduction makes itemizing worthwhile for more people, which changes whether your mortgage interest and charitable giving do anything at all. Those decisions are linked, and they should be modeled together rather than one at a time.
Standard deduction
$16,100 single, $24,150 head of household, $32,200 married filing jointly. Combined with the SALT change, a meaningful number of creators will flip sides of the itemize-or-not line this year compared to last. Worth actually checking rather than assuming your situation carried over.
AMT is back on the radar for high earners
The alternative minimum tax exemption phase-out thresholds reset to 2018 levels — $1 million for joint filers, $500,000 for everyone else — and the phase-out rate doubled to 50 cents per dollar of excess income. For most creators this is irrelevant. For the ones running a genuinely large business, it is worth modeling rather than discovering.
The 1099 thresholds you have already been living with
Quick recap, because both moved and they moved in opposite directions. The 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC threshold went from $600 to $2,000 for 2026 payments, with inflation indexing starting in 2027. The 1099-K threshold went back up to more than $20,000 and more than 200 transactions — both conditions, not either.
The practical effect is that less of your income generates paperwork this year than last year, while all of it remains fully taxable. The full breakdown is here, including the double-reporting problem when a brand pays you through a processor.
Trump accounts, if you have kids
New after-tax accounts for children under 18, with up to $5,000 a year in contributions. Worth knowing about generally, and worth knowing about specifically if you run a family channel — several states now require you to set aside a share of earnings for a child who appears in your content, and the two things should be planned together rather than separately. We covered the state rules here.
The tips and overtime deductions, and why they probably are not yours
These two got the most press, so creators ask about them constantly. Both are deductions for specific kinds of W-2-flavoured compensation — qualified tips and qualified overtime — with their own occupation and income limits.
Viewer tips on a stream are not “tips” in this sense. They are payments for a service you provide as a business owner, reported on Schedule C, subject to self-employment tax. The fact that the platform calls the button a tip jar does not change the character of the income.
There are narrow situations where a creator who also works a W-2 job in a tipped occupation might qualify on that job's income. But for creator revenue itself, assume no, and be sceptical of anyone on your feed suggesting otherwise.
What this means for your estimated payments right now
Several of these changes move taxable income in both directions at once. A bigger SALT deduction and a larger standard deduction push it down; a charitable floor that disallows part of your giving pushes it up. Which way you net out depends on your state, whether you itemize, and how much you give.
The practical consequence is that a set-aside percentage carried over from last year is now built on superseded assumptions. If you have not rebuilt the projection since these took effect, your Q4 payment in January is a guess wearing the costume of a calculation.
What did not change, and is now permanent
Two things worth restating because permanence changes how you plan around them. The qualified business income deduction stayed at 20%, became permanent, gained a $400 minimum for taxpayers with active qualified business income, and got a wider phase-in range. And 100% bonus depreciation is permanently restored for property acquired and placed in service after January 19, 2025, with the Section 179 limit at $2.5 million and a $4 million phase-out.
When a provision is temporary you rush to use it. When it is permanent you can sequence it — buy the equipment in the year the deduction is worth the most, rather than the year before it expires. That is a better position to plan from.
What to do with all of this
Most of these are not things you claim so much as things you structure around, and the structuring has to happen before December 31. The year-end checklist sequences it. If you would rather have someone run it against your actual numbers, that is what we do for creator clients — book a call.