It’s time to examine your existing business and personal (yes, personal) cars, SUVs, trucks, and vans for some profitable year-end business tax deductions.

In this article, we’ll first review the prior and current business vehicles owned by you or your pass-through business. Then we’ll look at your personal vehicles as a possible source of a last-minute tax-saving deduction thanks to 100 percent bonus depreciation, now a permanent part of the tax code.

Let’s start with prior and existing business vehicles.

Your first step is to identify your gain or loss on sale. Once you have the gain or loss, know these basic rules:

Gains attributable to depreciation produce ordinary income.

Gains in excess of original basis produce capital gains. (This is unlikely with most business vehicles, but it can happen with classic and antique business vehicles because they can increase in value.)

Losses on business vehicles produce ordinary deductions.

You report gains and losses on IRS Form 4797, which means those gains and losses fall outside the business income and expense categories and therefore don’t affect self-employment taxes.

Now you have the basic rules. At this time of year, we suspect you are looking for tax deductions from your vehicle loss, so we will start there.

Described below are five existing-vehicle tax-deduction strategies that you may be able to use. As with all year-end strategies, don’t wait! To claim these deductions this year, you must complete the required action by December 31, 2026. ... Log in to view full article.