If you’re looking to understand how the OBBBA can empower your business, this episode is packed with clear explanations and actionable insights for entrepreneurs everywhere.
Welcome to another episode of Empowering Entrepreneurs, hosted by Glenn Harper and Julie Smith. They talk about the real impact of the OBBBA—referred to as the "big beautiful bill"—on entrepreneurs and business owners.
With lots of chatter and confusion around what this legislation actually means, Glenn Harper breaks down the concrete benefits: from locking in permanent tax rates, to making long-term business planning easier, to allowing full write-offs for heavy vehicles and essential equipment purchases.
Julie Smith joins in with practical questions, making sure listeners know how these changes could directly affect their buying decisions and tax strategies.
Locked-in Tax Rates: The OBBBA makes the current tax rates permanent, allowing entrepreneurs to plan for the future with more certainty. No more worrying about sudden tax hikes after sunset clauses expire!
Permanent Qualified Business Income Deduction: Most flow-through entities can continue to benefit from this deduction. That means more money stays in your pocket and less goes to taxes.
Immediate Asset Write-Offs: Need new equipment, vehicles, or even a factory upgrade? Purchase qualifying assets and write off 100%—right away, with no long depreciation schedules.
Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.
Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.
Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for success
Glenn Harper, CPA, is the Owner and Managing Partner of Harper & Company CPAs Plus, a top 10 Managing Partner in the country (Accounting Today's 2022 MP Elite). His firm won the 2021 Luca Award for Firm of the Year.
An entrepreneur and speaker, Glenn transformed his firm into an advisory-focused practice, doubling revenue and profit in two years. He teaches entrepreneurs to build financial and operational excellence, speaks nationwide to CPA firm owners about running their businesses like entrepreneurs, and consults with firms across the country. Glenn enjoys golfing, fishing, hiking, cooking, and spending time with his family.
Julie Smith, MBA, is a serial entrepreneur in the public accounting space. She is the Founder of EmpowerCPA™, Founder of PureTax, LLC, COO for Harper & Company CPAs Plus, and Co-host of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast.
Named CPA.com's 2021 Innovative Practitioner of Year, Julie led Harper & Company's transition to an advisory-focused firm, doubling revenue and profit in two years. She now empowers other CPA firm owners nationwide through consulting and speaking, teaching them how to run their businesses like entrepreneurs. Julie lives in Columbus, OH with her family and enjoys travel, coaching basketball, sporting events, and the occasional shopping spree.
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Transcripts
Glenn Harper:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast. I'm Glenn Harper.
Julie Smith:
Julie Smith.
Glenn Harper:
What's going on, Julie?
Julie Smith:
Really excited for this solo episode today.
Glenn Harper:
Well, we're going to talk today a little bit, I think. What did you hear? Something about a big beautiful bill, maybe?
Julie Smith:
Well, we hear a lot about this big beautiful bill, but it's like, how does it affect me? How does it affect you? What does that look like? What can I, what, what does this allow me to do? What can I plan for?
Glenn Harper:
Now you want a G wagon, don't you?
Julie Smith:
Well, we've been talking about that, right?
Glenn Harper:
No.
So what the big beautiful bill does, which is really nice for entrepreneurs and anybod owns a business, big companies, little companies, whatever is, it solidifies the tax rates that are now permanent. Where before in the old TCGAA they were set to expire after the seven years. So now that they're permanent, now we can plan long term.
What is that cost gonna look like for our taxes? That's step one, which is a big deal. Cause now that gives us some consistency and some Runway to go.
Okay, if we do this, this and this, we know what those results are gonna look like.
Julie Smith:
Now I know when I can buy my G wagon plan.
Glenn Harper:
That's right.
Step two then says, well, let us have inside the big beautiful bill, let us have the qualified business income deduction, which works for most flow through entities.
It lets us be able to take this free deduction based on either your profit or your payroll and let you just deduct it right off the top if you're a qualifying business, which is really nice because that was set to expire. So that would have been a huge tax increase for flow through entities, which is the majority of the people working today have a flow through entity.
The next thing was is that the bonus depreciation where you could deduct. You have to take things over time or do.
When you buy a big asset, you have to take it over five years, seven years, 15 years, 20 years, whatever it is. But when you bought a vehicle, you had to take it over time and it was limited.
Well, if you buy a heavy vehicle over £6,000, you get to write off 100% of that up to the business use of it right away. If you.
And this includes a plane, anything you need for a business, you have a factory, you're building equipment, all the things, some certain improvements that are qualified for a particular building. So what it does is it puts in play where when you buy something big, normally you had to take it over a long time.
You can write it off today, which is really, really nice.
Julie Smith:
So if I need a big truck to put a plow on it for this weekend, when this big snowstorm, this would apply to me.
Glenn Harper:
Correct. Instead you used to have to buy it, depreciate over five, seven years. There was limits on it. Now write the whole thing off.
There's really no limit on it, which is really nice.
And so that's going to help a lot of people invest in that property plant and equipment and get an immediate tax benefit to help pay for the cost of that and subsidize that with the government. And you get to then put that piece of equipment into play and make your income off it or utilize it in your business however you want.
So now we've got instant write off for a lot of things. We've got locked in tax rates and we have the ability then to have have this qualified business income deduction be very permanent.
And it's a very wonderful thing.
So if you're an entrepreneur, all three of those strategies are really nice to be using and make sure you recognize those as you go through your tax planning strategies.
