Roofing Business Taxes: What Changed and What Actually Saves | Hommy
Roofing Business Taxes: What Changed and What Actually Saves You Money
Bonus depreciation is not phasing down anymore. It is back to 100 percent and permanent, which changes how you should buy a truck. Here are the 2026 numbers that matter.
Hommy
July 17, 2026 · 13 min read
If you still think bonus depreciation is stepping down toward zero, your equipment buying plan is built on a schedule that no longer exists. It was reinstated at 100 percent and made permanent. That single change matters more to a roofing company than everything else on this page.
General information, not tax advice
This is general information for contractors, not tax advice. Figures below are for tax year 2026 and are labelled as such. Your situation depends on your entity type, income, and state. Work with a CPA who handles construction businesses.
Bonus depreciation: back to 100 percent, permanently
The phase-down everyone remembers, 80 percent, then 60, then 40, is gone. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act reinstated 100 percent first-year depreciation and the IRS describes it as permanent.
Two details decide whether you get it:
The trigger is the ACQUISITION date, not the placed-in-service date. Qualified property acquired after January 19, 2025 gets 100 percent.
Property acquired on or before January 19, 2025 but placed in service during 2025 stays at 40 percent.
You can also elect down to 40 percent if a full write-off would waste deductions in a low-income year. That election exists precisely because a 100 percent deduction is not always the best answer.
What this means practically: a dump trailer, compressor, or work truck bought this year can generally be written off entirely in year one, without needing to lean on Section 179 first.
“The trigger for 100 percent bonus depreciation is when you acquired the asset, not when you put it to work. That distinction decides the deduction on anything you ordered around the turn of 2025.”
The Hommy Team
Section 179, tax year 2026
Maximum deduction: 2,560,000 dollars.
Phase-out threshold: 4,090,000 dollars, reduced dollar for dollar above that.
For almost every roofing company those numbers are academic, which is the point. With bonus depreciation back at 100 percent and no dollar cap, Section 179 is no longer the primary tool for expensing a truck or a trailer. It still matters for things bonus depreciation does not reach, and for managing which year a deduction lands in, so it is a conversation to have with your CPA rather than a default.
Standard mileage rate for 2026: 72.5 cents per business mile, up 2.5 cents from 2025.
Section 179 cap on SUVs for 2026: 32,000 dollars.
Vehicles over 6,000 pounds gross vehicle weight rating fall outside the passenger automobile luxury caps, though they remain listed property with substantiation and qualified business use requirements.
Two traps worth knowing. First, you cannot use the standard mileage rate on a vehicle where you claimed Section 179 or accelerated depreciation, and you cannot use it if five or more vehicles are in simultaneous fleet use. Pick your method before you file the first year, because it constrains you afterwards.
Second, heavy SUVs and pickups are not treated identically. A heavy SUV still hits the Section 179 SUV cap. Certain pickups with a long cargo bed are generally treated differently. We could not confirm the bed-length rule on a current IRS page, so ask your CPA about the specific truck before you buy on that assumption.
We are also not quoting 2026 passenger automobile depreciation caps, because the 2026 figures come from a separate revenue procedure we could not locate. Do not use a 2025 figure as if it were current.
Tools and safety gear: the deduction you are probably overcomplicating
The de minimis safe harbor lets you simply expense items rather than capitalising and depreciating them. The limits are 5,000 dollars per invoice or per item if you have an applicable financial statement, and 2,500 dollars if you do not, which covers most contractors.
This is the workhorse for a roofing company. Nail guns, harnesses, ladders, compressors, most individual tools land under 2,500 dollars and get expensed outright without touching Section 179 or a depreciation schedule at all.
It is an annual election, made by attaching a de minimis safe harbor election statement to a timely filed return. It is not an accounting method change, so there is no Form 3115 involved.
On safety gear specifically, the general principle is that protective equipment required for the work and not suitable for everyday wear is deductible. We could not source that to a current IRS page, so treat it as the standard understanding rather than a citation.
The deduction remains 20 percent of qualified business income. Tax year 2026 thresholds:
Married filing jointly: 403,500 dollars, phasing in fully by 553,500 dollars.
All other returns: 201,750 dollars, phasing in fully by 276,750 dollars.
Worth noting that the phase-in ranges widened significantly for 2026, to 150,000 dollars for joint filers and 75,000 for others, up from 100,000 and 50,000. That softens the cliff for contractors sitting just over the line.
Roofing is not a specified service trade or business, so the restrictions that hit consultants and professionals generally do not apply to you.
The IRS website is currently contradicting itself on this one
The IRS explainer page for the qualified business income deduction still states it applies through tax years ending on or before December 31, 2025. That page is stale: the IRS has separately published 199A thresholds for tax years beginning in 2026. When a topic page and a revenue procedure disagree, trust the revenue procedure, and ask your CPA rather than a search result.
Self-employment tax and the wage base
Self-employment tax remains 15.3 percent: 12.4 percent Social Security plus 2.9 percent Medicare.
Social Security wage base for 2026: 184,500 dollars. Medicare has no cap.
An additional Medicare tax of 0.9 percent applies above filing status thresholds.
The wage base is the number to plan around. Income above it stops accruing the 12.4 percent Social Security portion, which is why the timing of a big storm-season year matters to your effective rate.
Quarterly estimates, and the safe harbor built for seasonal income
Due dates for tax year 2026: April 15 and June 15 and September 15 of 2026, then January 15 of 2027.
You avoid an underpayment penalty by paying the lesser of:
90 percent of your current year tax, or
100 percent of your prior year tax, rising to 110 percent if your prior year income was above the higher-income threshold.
There is also no penalty if you owe under 1,000 dollars after withholding and credits.
For a roofing company the prior-year safe harbor is usually the right play. Income swings hard with storm season and you cannot forecast the current year in April, but you already know exactly what last year was. Paying against a known number removes the guesswork entirely.
One caution: the AGI threshold that pushes you from 100 percent to 110 percent is a specific figure we got conflicting readings on, so confirm the current threshold with your CPA rather than assuming.
The simplified method is 5 dollars per square foot up to 300 square feet, so a maximum of 1,500 dollars a year.
The requirement that disqualifies most people is exclusive and regular use: the space must be used solely for business. A dining table that becomes a desk in the evening does not qualify.
The useful part for a contractor: your principal place of business can be job sites and you may still qualify, if the home office is used for administrative and management activities and you have no other fixed location for that work. That describes a lot of roofing companies.
Confirm the current figures against Publication 587 before you rely on them. The IRS page carrying the 5 dollar and 300 square foot numbers is flagged by the IRS itself as historical content, and we could not find them restated on a current page.
Contract accounting, and why you probably qualify for the simple version
Large contractors generally have to use percentage of completion accounting. Small contractors get an exception and may use a simpler permissible method, commonly completed contract or cash, for contracts expected to finish within about two years.
The gross receipts test for tax years beginning in 2026 is average annual gross receipts of 32 million dollars over the three prior years, up from 31 million.
Practically every roofing contractor is far under that, so the simpler methods are available to you. Confirm the duration rule and the exact mechanics with your CPA, since we verified the gross receipts figure but not every element of how the exception is applied.
The short list
Buy equipment knowing bonus depreciation is 100 percent and permanent, and that the acquisition date is the trigger.
Use the de minimis safe harbor for tools under 2,500 dollars and stop depreciating nail guns.
Pick your vehicle method deliberately, because mileage and depreciation are mutually exclusive on the same truck.
Pay quarterly estimates against last year known tax rather than guessing at a storm season.
Do not trust IRS topic pages on the qualified business income deduction right now. They are behind the actual rules.
Have the conversation with a CPA who works with contractors before December, not in April.
