The perfect time to tax plan
THE TAX MOVES THAT DIE AFTER JUNE
The business owners who walk out of April with the lowest tax bills didn't do anything clever in December.
They ran the projection in June.
Here's a scenario I see every spring. A consultant wraps her best year ever. $380,000 in net profit. She calls in February, thrilled. I pull up her books.
Then I have to tell her where ~$34,000 went in avoidable tax:
- $20,000. No retirement plan was ever set up.
- $8,000. Bonus depreciation she could have taken on $60,000 of equipment sitting in her office right now.
- $4,000. An S-Corp salary set too low to optimize her QBI deduction.
- $2,000. Estimates calibrated to last year's income, so she's carrying a penalty she doesn't know about yet.
(S-Corp, ~$380K profit, ~32% marginal rate. Round numbers, and they interact. But the size is real.)
Nothing she did was wrong. She never stopped to look.
And every one of those four lines is a thing she could have caught in June. That's what the rest of this is. The checklist she skipped, in order:
- Run the number.
- Check the salary.
- Set up the plan.
- Fix the estimates.
- Stop the leaks.
We're in June. By October you're in execution mode. By December you're running the plays that were set up months ago, or scrambling. By March you're documenting what happened. June is the one month where your tax year is flexible and your calendar is quiet enough to do something about it.
1. CLOSE YOUR BOOKS AND PROJECT THE YEAR
You can't fix what you can't see.
Get your books current through May. Reconciled accounts, categorized expenses, personal charges removed. Most business owners making six figures are running Q3 decisions off Q1 data. The gap is where the money disappears.
Once the books are clean, project the year:
Year-to-date net income ÷ months elapsed × 12 = full-year baseline.
Brought in $175,000 through May? You're tracking toward $420,000 for the year. That number tells you which brackets you'll hit. Whether your estimates are right. Whether your retirement room is being used. Whether your current salary makes any sense.
Run three versions: flat, stretch, and down. Each one implies a different set of moves. You can't know which matters until you model them.
The consultant never ran this number. That's where the $34,000 leak started.
2. CHECK YOUR S-CORP SALARY BEFORE IT CALCIFIES
Your S-Corp salary controls three things at once: payroll tax exposure, your QBI deduction if you're above the income threshold, and your retirement contribution ceiling.
Get it wrong and you give back a QBI deduction that used to be automatic. In 2026, the phase-out starts at $403,500 for married filing jointly. Your salary and your projection together decide how much you keep.
Most S-Corp owners set a salary in January and never look again. By December their income has moved, their bracket has shifted, and their salary is optimized for a business that no longer exists.
If you're a sole proprietor projecting $150,000 or more in net profit, June is when you have the S-Corp conversation. The analysis takes time. Starting it now means the decision is strategic, not reactive.
If you're an S-Corp owner, waiting until November means cramming the right number into a few payroll runs. Getting it wrong costs you on QBI, retirement, or both. Start the analysis now.
Run the numbers in our S-Corp calculator →
3. SET UP YOUR RETIREMENT PLAN BEFORE THE DECEMBER WALL
This is the one that causes the most regret.
A solo 401(k) must be established by December 31 to make employee elective deferrals for that tax year. The written deferral election and payroll processing have to happen before the calendar flips. The employer profit-sharing portion can wait until your filing deadline, including extensions.
For S-Corp owners: employee elective deferrals - $24,500 for 2026, plus an $8,000 catch-up at 50+, or $11,250 for ages 60-63 where the plan permits - run through payroll by December 31.
Make it a Q3 project. Custodians stop accepting new plan setups in early December. Miss their cutoff and you've missed the year.
Combined contributions for 2026 can reach $72,000 under 50, $80,000 at 50+, and up to $83,250 for ages 60-63.
If your projection shows $250,000 in profit and no plan exists, you're leaving $72,000 of contribution space on the table. At a 32% marginal rate, that's over $23,000 in deferred federal tax. That was $20,000 of the consultant's bill.
4. CHECK YOUR ESTIMATED PAYMENTS AGAINST YOUR NEW PROJECTION
I went deep on this last week, so here's the short version.
Your Q1 and Q2 payments were set to last year's income. If 2026 is running hot, you're behind. The IRS charges interest from each due date, not from April. Safe harbor, 110% of last year's total tax, or 100% if your prior-year AGI was under $150,000, keeps you penalty-free no matter how high this year climbs. It does not touch the bill.
Run your projection, find the gap between safe harbor and your real number, and build toward it now instead of scrambling for it in March.
5. STOP LOSING DEDUCTIONS TO A PERSONAL CARD
Every deductible business expense that runs through a personal account between now and December is a deduction you'll either miss or spend an hour reconstructing at tax time.
The mid-year review is when you catch this. Vehicle mileage you haven't logged. Home office you've been using but not tracking. Meals with business purpose sitting in your personal Amex feed.
On equipment: under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, 100% bonus depreciation is now permanent for qualifying property acquired after January 19, 2025 and placed in service in 2026. On an $80,000 equipment purchase, the entire cost comes off in year one. At a 32% marginal rate, that's $25,600 in tax savings in year one.
Return on Hassle test: would you buy it without the deduction? If yes, place it in service by December 31. If no, the deduction was never a reason.
That $60,000 of equipment in the consultant's office was $8,000 of her bill.
Once you have a real 2026 projection, every other decision snaps into place. Salary, retirement, estimates, deductions. The math runs off that one number. Without it, you're making five separate guesses instead of one informed plan.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Great tax planning happens in June. Not December, and not next April.
The owners with the lowest bills knew their number. The salary was right. The retirement plan existed and was funded. The estimates reflected reality. Every deductible dollar ran through the right account.
Nothing on this list is difficult. All of it is time-sensitive.
If you're projecting $200,000 or more this year and haven't run this analysis, the window is now. Visor runs it: project the year, check the structure, find what needs to move before Q3.
P.S. Your best year ever is the worst year to ignore your tax situation. Higher income means higher rates, QBI phase-outs that didn't apply when you made less, and retirement strategies that stop working at the wrong salary. Run the projection before Q3 starts.