One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Year Two: What's Changing for Your Clients in 2026
Last year was the headline year. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed, and
everyone (us included) spent months talking about it.
OBBBA brought changes to our tax work with clients; namely, more clients are itemizing. The SALT cap jumped from $10,000 to $40,000, so mortgage interest, state and local taxes, and charitable giving now add up to more than the standard deduction for a lot of households that used to skip past itemizing entirely. That means the paperwork matters more than it has in prior years.
If you're already having the OBBBA conversation with a client, the most useful thing you can reinforce is: send us the 1098 for every mortgage (especially in years where they refinance), track charitable giving as it happens instead of reconstructing it in February, send us closing statements when they buy or sell a home, and hold onto records of state and local taxes paid. Small ask, real difference in what we can capture on their return!
Here are three changes worth flagging to any client this fall:
Charitable giving got more complicated (in a way that might change your advice)
A few things changed for 2026, and some pull in opposite directions.
If a client takes the standard deduction, they can now also deduct cash gifts to a qualifying charity, up to $1,000 for single filers or $2,000 for joint filers. This is new. Before, if you didn't itemize, giving didn't reduce your tax bill at all.
If a client itemizes, there's a new floor to clear first. Only the portion of their giving that exceeds 0.5% of AGI is deductible. On a $100,000 AGI household, the first $500 of giving each year doesn't count toward anything.
For the highest earners sitting in the 37% bracket, the benefit of itemized charitable deductions is capped at 35%. When planning for these clients, first calculate the 0.5% AGI floor they must clear, and then consider the remaining charity will only yield a 35-cents to the dollar federal tax benefit.
Put together, this changes the standard-vs-itemize math for a lot of clients, and it makes "bunching" donations into alternating years more attractive for anyone who's now landing just below the itemizing threshold because of the floor. If a client's giving plan hasn't been revisited since OBBBA passed, this is the year to do it.
💡 Vivify Pro Tip: For traditional cash donations, we just want the total amount given for the year, not individual receipts. Clients can hold onto receipts for their own records! DAF and stock donations are different: we need the DAF's giving letter (the one Schwab Charitable and similar sponsors send) or records showing what was donated, the date, and the fair market value at the time. This is somewhere a wealth advisor can genuinely help, since that documentation is often already sitting in the account they manage.
Roth catch-up contributions aren't optional anymore for high earners
As of January 1, 2026, any employee 50 or older who earned more than $150,000 in wages the prior year has to make their catch-up contributions on a Roth basis. Pre-tax catch-up is no longer available to them, full stop. The 2026 catch-up limit is $8,000.
The part worth flagging to clients isn't just the rule itself, but what it does to a paycheck. A Roth catch-up contribution doesn't reduce taxable wages the way a pre-tax one does, so a client deferring the full $8,000 will see more withheld and less take-home pay than they're used to, even though the amount they're contributing hasn't changed!
It's also a reasonable prompt to zoom out. Since this catch-up is now a forced post-tax dollar, it's worth checking whether the rest of a client's savings is intentionally split between pre-tax and post-tax. An IRA or backdoor Roth contribution can be a natural complement here!
Trump Accounts are open for business
New this summer: a tax-advantaged savings account for kids, seeded with a one-time $1,000 deposit from the Treasury. Eligible children are born between 2025 and 2028, are U.S. citizens, and have a Social Security number. Parents or guardians may elect in by filing Form 4547.
💡 Vivify Pro Tip: We don't file Form 4547 as part of our tax prep process. For interested clients, we urge them to complete the form via their IRS portal at irs.gov/trumpaccounts.
The headline year for One Big Beautiful Bill Act is over... The work isn't!
Last year the questions were about the bill itself. This year they're about a specific client, a specific paycheck, a specific form. That's the harder, but more useful conversation, and it's the one worth having now rather than after the fact.
As always: this is general information, not advice for any specific client situation. Run the numbers before you make a recommendation, and loop us in if you want a second set of eyes on the tax side.
