2025 Tax Trends and Updates

It’s pretty common for tax pros to write an end-of-the-year summary, so I thought I’d contribute mine. Here I go over some important tax trends and updates that are (or should be) of particular interest to bloggers and other content creators.

We’ll start with two trends where I see a lot of…well, let’s be kind and say misinformation. Then we’ll look at how recent legislation may impact bloggers, creators and gig workers.

Disclaimer: information on this website is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as professional business, financial or legal advice.

Tax Trend #1: The Disabled Access Credit

One trend I noticed in 2025 is an increase in the number of non-tax professionals claiming that you can receive a $5000 tax credit for making your website accessible to people with disabilities. Of course these professionals usually sell accessibility or web design services.

As both a tax professional and someone trained on web accessibility, I can tell you with certainty that you can’t take the Disabled Access Credit for making accessibility changes to your website. I’ll be generous and say these non-tax professionals are just misinformed. Though, honestly, it appears to be a case of selective reading.

These non-tax, accessibility and web design professionals typically quote language from the second page of IRS Form 8826, specifically Item 1. This states that eligible expenses for the Disabled Access Credit include those paid “to remove barriers that prevent a business from being accessible to or usable by individuals with disabilities.”

Accessibility and web design professionals claim this means that expenses like accessibility audits and accessibility-related website changes are eligible for the credit.

They are not.

And if the accessibility and web design professionals read the entire form, they would know that.

Because the form also states, very clearly, that:

• The changes must be made to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, as in effect on November 5, 1990.
• Changes made to comply with Item 1 are not eligible for the credit if the “facility” was placed in service after November 5, 1990.

This means accessibility changes to websites aren’t eligible for the Disabled Access Credit because:

• The 1990 ADA law doesn’t include language governing websites (because websites didn’t exist).
• The Disabled Access Credit generally doesn’t apply to businesses started after November 5, 1990.

Moreover, Form 8862 states that to be eligible for the credit, changes must meet “standards issued by the Secretary of the Treasury as agreed to by the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board and set forth in regulations.”

Does the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board sound like it has anything to do with websites?

It’s clear that the Disabled Access Credit was primarily meant to help brick and mortar businesses that existed prior to the ADA make physical changes to their buildings to comply with the new law. It was never meant to apply to websites.

And even if the 1990 ADA is eventually amended to include digital accessibility guidelines, websites still won’t qualify for the Disabled Access Credit unless the Internal Revenue Code referring to the 1990 date and version of the law is also amended.

“It’s clear that the Disabled Access Credit was primarily meant to help brick and mortar businesses that existed prior to the ADA to make physical changes to their buildings to comply with the new law. It was never meant to apply to websites.”

So, does this mean you shouldn’t try to make your website more accessible? Of course not.

It does mean that you shouldn’t get scammed into taking a credit you aren’t eligible for.

(There, I said it. It’s a scam.)

You can deduct accessibility-related expenses, not take a credit for them.

If you hire someone to perform an accessibility audit, you can deduct that as a business expense, just like you’d deduct bookkeeping or other professional services. If you hire someone to make accessibility-related changes to your site, you can deduct that as an expense, too.

The key difference is that these are deductions. They will reduce the amount of income that you owe tax on. Credits reduce the amount of tax you actually pay. That’s why people prefer credits to deductions. And why the IRS has identified taking credits you don’t really qualify for as one of the biggest tax cheats.

If you’re confused about taxes and your tax obligations regarding your blog or small business, consider joining my membership, Creator Business Club. The first module in CBC goes over tax basics. The second module includes information on more advanced tax topics. You can learn more about CBC here.

Tax Trend #2: The BOI Report

There was a lot of confusion about the Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) Report this past year. In part because official guidance kept changing. In part due to intentional misinformation.

Briefly, the BOI is part of a law passed by Congress in 2021. This law, the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), is intended to subvert major crimes like drug trafficking and money laundering.

The idea behind the law is that sometimes criminals form LLCs to appear as legitimate businesses. They then funnel their illegal earnings through these businesses, hoping to avoid detection by law enforcement. One way to thwart this is to require businesses to provide the names of people who have ownership interest in the business.

The CTA required all registered businesses, including LLCs, to report information on their owner(s) to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). This included single-member LLCs, which is a popular business structure for sole proprietors.

I saw quite a few people ask why FinCEN didn’t just get this information from the IRS. But the IRS doesn’t have this information. LLCs are state-level entities; when you form an LLC, you register it with your state, not the federal government.

Moreover, LLCs are “pass-through” entities. That means an LLC doesn’t pay taxes. Instead, all the earnings pass through to the owners and are taxed as personal income. Since LLCs aren’t taxable entities, there’s no reason for the IRS to keep a record of them.

So, the only way for FinCEN to get information on LLC ownership is for owners to report the information to FinCEN directly.

The BOI requirement was supposed to start in January 2024, but was delayed several times for various reasons. Long story short, FinCEN issued new guidance in March 2025 that only LLCs with foreign ownership have to file a BOI report. Domestic LLCs, those totally owned by US citizens, do not currently need to file a BOI report.

I say currently because, as far as I know, the original law is still in place. FinCEN is just not currently enforcing it. But that could change.

Nonetheless, I have seen a lot of advertisements with people offering to file your BOI report. For a fee, of course.

These ads typically highlight the massive penalties for failing to file a BOI report. And the penalties are steep: $500 a day, up to $10,000. And the possibility of criminal charges, too.

These ads also talk about getting in big trouble with the IRS if you don’t file a BOI report. But BOI reports don’t go to the IRS, they go to FinCEN, a completely different agency.

But most people have never heard of FinCEN. Everyone has heard of the IRS. And they’re terrified of being audited or owing money to the IRS. So saying you could get in big trouble with the IRS makes better ad copy.

Anyway, these uh…people, promise to file your BOI report and make sure you’re compliant with the law. Again, for a fee.

Except the BOI report is free to file. And the paperwork takes all of 10 minutes. And FinCEN has tutorials on how small business owners can file the report themselves.

So there was never a reason to pay to file a BOI report, even when the requirement did apply to all LLCs.

The scams around BOI got so bad that FinCEN had to issue a public fraud alert telling people not to pay.

In summary, the lessons here are:
1) BOI reports are filed with FinCEN, not the IRS.
2) Filing a BOI report is (and is supposed to be) free.
3) LLCs with only US owners are not currently required to file a BOI report.

But here we are in early December 2025 and I’m still seeing websites offering “BOI reporting.” And not just scam sites. I’ve seen legit tax and accounting businesses still listing this as a paid service. Sigh.

Okay, now that we’ve looked at some common tax scams (I mean trends), let’s look at some recent legislation. 2025 saw the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, abbreviated as OB3 in the tax community. There are some OB3 provision of note, but really there wasn’t much new for small business owners in OB3.

The One Big Beautiful Bill (OB3)

The OB3 made certain provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) permanent. Well, permanent until Congress decides to rewrite the tax law again. It also did away with some prior law regarding 1099 reporting requirements.

QBI Deduction

The TCJA included a qualified business income deduction (QBI) for sole proprietors, partnerships and S-corp owners. The QBI allows business owners to deduct up to 20% of their business income, which can greatly reduce the amount of income they pay tax on.

However, the QBI has income limits. Once these income limits are exceeded, the amount of the QBI deduction you can claim starts to drop. And people with certain types of businesses, like accountants and lawyers, may lose the QBI deduction completely.

The QBI deduction was supposed to end in 2025, but the OB3 made the QBI deduction permanent. There are still income limits, though, which are adjusted each year.

100% Depreciation Deductions

The TCJA had several laws regarding depreciation of business assets (known as Section 179 and bonus depreciation). These laws allow businesses to fully depreciate (that is, deduct) certain assets in the year they’re purchased, rather than having to slowly depreciate them according to IRS depreciation schedules.

There are restrictions on the type and cost of assets here, but most bloggers, content creators and gig workers don’t have a lot of really expensive depreciable assets. The bottom line is that, generally speaking, you should be able to deduct the full cost of a new computer, camera, microphone and most other tangible assets in the year you buy them.

If you have questions about whether a business purchase is depreciable and/or deductible, ask a tax professional. Or enroll in Creator Business Club and take the Schedule C Deep Dive lesson.

1099-K Reporting Requirements

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), passed in 2021, required third-party settlement organizations to send 1099-Ks to everyone who received more than $600 in a given year.

That means companies that accept payments on behalf of business owners are required to report those payments to the IRS. This has always been true. But the reporting threshold was historically much higher.

So, for example, say you have an Etsy store. Etsy collects payments on your behalf whenever you sell something. At the end of the year, Etsy totals all your sales and reports to you and to the IRS how much money you made. Etsy does this by sending a Form 1099-K to both you and the IRS.

You’re supposed to include the information from the 1099-K on your tax return. The IRS will match what you report against its records. If a 1099-K was filed for you but you didn’t report this information on your return, the IRS will initiate what’s known as an automatic underreporting audit (AUR).

In the past, the amount of money you needed to make to trigger a 1099-K reporting requirement was pretty high: $20,000 and at least 200 transactions.

Form	Purpose
1099-NEC	Used to report payments to non-employees (e.g. contractors, freelancers)
1099-MISC	Used to report miscellaneous income (e.g. rent received, prizes and awards)
1099-K	Used to report payments from third-party payment processors (e.g. Etsy, Stripe)

The ARPA law brought 1099-K reporting requirements in line with those for a 1099-NEC. That’s the form you provide to independent contractors who perform services for your business.

Historically the reporting requirement for a 1099-NEC was $600. If you hired a freelancer to design your website or take photos for your social media accounts and you paid them more than $600 in a single year, you were supposed to send them and the IRS a 1099-NEC reporting their total earnings.

So that’s where the $600 1099-K reporting requirement in ARPA came from. It was meant to provide parity between the different 1099 forms.

But a lot of people felt the $600 1099-K reporting requirement was too low. There was a lot of back-and-forth on this topic and the IRS never fully implemented the new $600 requirement. Instead the IRS tried to phase it in over time, reducing the reporting threshold each year.

Then the OB3 repealed the ARPA 1099-K requirement and reinstituted the old $20,000 and 200+ transaction requirements.

But that doesn’t go into effect until 2026. So you may get a 1099-K for 2025 even if you didn’t make anywhere near $20,000 from a single payment processor.

Plus, a lot of companies had already adjusted their software and accounting systems to comply with the ARPA law. So they may send 1099-Ks to everyone, regardless of how much money they actually made.

OB3 also increased the reporting requirements for 1099-NEC forms. Starting in 2026, the threshold for 1099-NECs increases from $600 to $2,000. So if you hire a freelancer or contractor, you aren’t legally required to send a 1099-NEC form to the IRS until you’ve paid them at least $2,000 over the course of the year.

And that $2,000 threshold is adjusted for inflation each year, meaning the dollar amount will change from year-to-year.

Yeah, I know it’s confusing.

Here’s what you really need to know:

• You are required to report all the income you earn even if you don’t get 1099 forms from all the people/companies who paid you.
• Beginning in 2026, if you pay someone $2,000 or more to perform services for your business, you are required to send them and the IRS a 1099-NEC.

So, keep good records of both your earnings and your expenses throughout the year. Know how much money you make and from what sources. Know how much money you’re paying for services and be aware if you’re going to hit the 1099-NEC reporting requirement.

If you hire freelancers (or work as one yourself) and aren’t sure if you’re properly following the 1099 requirements, or any other tax law, please consider joining the membership. There’s a lot of tax information inside there. There’s also a discussion forum where you can ask questions. I participate in the forum every day, so you can get answers to your questions from a qualified tax professional. If that sounds good to you, head over to the CBC FAQ page.