The Deductibles // July 2026

⚠️ The Deadlines a Proactive Firm Is Already Working Toward

🗓 September 15, 2026 – Q3 estimated tax payment due. A proactive firm builds this recommendation on your real first-half numbers, not last year's return plus a guess.

🗓 September 15, 2026 – Extended S-Corp and Partnership returns due.

🗓 October 15, 2026 – Extended individual returns due. An extension is a planning window, not a delay. If your return has been sitting untouched since April, that window is closing.

Not sure where your return stands? That's usually the first sign of the problem. Talk to a Gelt tax strategist →

☀️ Four Summer Tax Moves Your CPA Should Be Talking to You About

If your tax team has been quiet since April, here's what that silence is costing. These are the conversations happening right now between proactive firms and their clients:

• The Augusta Rule. Rent your home to your business for up to 14 days a year, tax free. Summer is peak season for board meetings, retreats, and planning sessions at home. Run your numbers with our Augusta Rule calculator →

• Hiring your kids for the summer. Legitimate wages to your children shift income to their lower bracket, can be deductible to the business, and can even fund a Roth IRA in their name. Done right, it's one of the cleanest family tax moves available.

• Business travel that overlaps with vacation. If a trip has a legitimate business purpose, a meaningful portion of the travel costs may be deductible. The documentation has to be right, which is exactly the kind of thing a year-round tax team sets up before the trip, not after.

• A Q3 true-up on real numbers. Six months of actual income beats twelve months of guessing. If your business is up, down, or different from last year, your Q3 estimate should reflect that now, not next April.

Every one of these has fine print, and every one works better with a team that's paying attention in July. See what these moves look like for your situation →

📚 Fresh From the Gelt Blog

Want a feel for how we think before you ever book a call? Two recent reads:

• What Is a Schedule K-1 and How Does It Affect Your Taxes? From the latest episode of Tax Talk Unfiltered, our podcast where Gelt CPAs answer the questions clients actually ask. This one decodes the K-1: what it reports, why you're taxed on profit even without distributions, when losses count, and what to do when yours shows up late. If your current CPA has never walked you through your K-1, that's the gap we're talking about. Read and watch →

• What AI Actually Does at Gelt (and Who Is Allison?) Everyone claims to use AI. We sat down with our CEO, Head of Tax, and product team to explain plainly what ours actually does, where the human CPA takes over, and who Allison is. No black boxes, no replacing your CPA with a chatbot. Just faster answers and sharper strategy. Read the conversation →

🤝 New in the Gelt Ecosystem

Tax strategy doesn't happen in a vacuum, so we build partnerships that make the whole picture stronger. Two new additions this month:

• Puzzle. An AI-native accounting software that gives business owners real-time visibility into their finances. Puzzle automates the heavy lifting so your books stay clean, current, and actually useful throughout the year. When your books are in good shape, your tax strategy gets a whole lot sharper: we can plan around real numbers, catch opportunities early, and make sure nothing is left on the table.

• King Operating Corporation. King Operating has been helping investors access oil and gas investment opportunities since 1996. Through our partnership, their investors now have access to proactive, year-round tax planning from Gelt to help maximize the tax benefits of their investments.

🎥 Save Your Spot: The Oil & Gas Deductions You Can't Miss

Join Gelt and King Operating on 8/20/2026 for a live session on proactive tax planning and the potential tax advantages of oil and gas investing. Learn how these strategies may fit into your broader financial plan and whether they align with your goals.

Featuring Spencer Carroll, CPA, and Rachel Richards

👉 Save your spot →

☀️ The Joy of Tax: Meet the People Who Would Be Working on Your Plan

Most people don't associate taxes with joy. Our team would like a word.

We've been publishing the Joy of Tax, an interview series with the tax strategists at Gelt on why they love this work, and now every story lives in one place. You'll hear about the simple catch that recovered a client over $50,000, the S-corp salary rethink that saved another roughly $30,000 a year, and what it looks like when the people behind your return actually enjoy finding you money.

This is the difference between a firm that files your taxes and a team that works your taxes.

👉 Read the full series here →

📰 Gelt in the News: In Case You Missed It

Our team kept busy in the press this summer. Here's the latest, plus a few worth a second look:

• Citybiz – Rachel Richards, CPA on why your business structure shapes your tax bill more than any deduction, from the S-corp self-employment tax math to knowing when it's time to reevaluate your entity.

• Entrepreneur – Gelt CEO Tal Binder breaks down the four problems behind every surprise tax bill, and why the fix starts long before April.

• Kiplinger – Rachel Richards, CPA on the Q2 moves every business owner should be making now, from using April's return to spot missed opportunities to planning ahead on retirement, entity structure, and charitable giving.

• Medical Economics – A physician's guide to making the most of a tax extension, reframing the window before October 15 as planning time instead of a delay.

🎯 Stop Guessing, Start Saving

If your tax team's last message was in April, you don't have a tax strategy. You have a filing service.

Gelt works year-round: real projections built on your real numbers, strategies implemented while there's still time for them to matter, and a team that files and acts on your behalf so nothing falls through the cracks.

👉 Schedule a call with a Gelt tax expert →

📧 Send us a message — share your ideas, questions, or topics you'd like to see in future editions with us at [email protected]

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