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Will Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” Make or Break Your Business?

Will Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act Make or Break Your Business?

The U.S. is once again at the cusp of sweeping tax reform. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 (OBBBA) is here, and it promises deep rate cuts, streamlined rules, and fewer regulatory hurdles.

Where others see this as just a headline, we at Unified Global's view this change as a set of real-life implications that clients must navigate carefully. Let’s comb through the critical provisions and what they could mean for different stakeholders.


What Changes with OBBBA?


Adjustments to Individual Taxation

Under the new reform, you may find yourself in a different tax bracket – for better or worse. The temporary pieces of the 2017 law that were set to expire largely continue, with recalibrated thresholds and phase-outs designed to keep more income taxed at lower rates.

Standard deductions and credits, like child, dependent care and adoption credits, are shifting too. The cap on state and local tax deductions is now higher, which may benefit those in high-tax states.

Business Tax Reforms

Updated rules on write-offs, reporting requirements, deductions, and credits could affect how you operate and how much tax you owe. Under OBBBA, the bonus depreciation is now permanently set at 100% for qualified property placed in service.

The OBBBA permanently restores immediate expensing of domestic research and experimental (R&E) expenditures, reversing the prior requirement to capitalize and amortize these costs over five years for U.S. research. However, foreign R&E expenditures must still be capitalized and amortized over 15 years

For finance teams, this could materially change after-tax ROI on equipment and software, and it revives the incentive to keep R&D on-shore. The key: updating your fixed-asset and project-accounting playbooks accordingly.

Payroll-Related Changes

Two headline provisions apply from 2025 through 2028. First, workers can exclude up to $12,500 of overtime pay (or $25,000 if filing jointly) from federal taxable income. This is not a full exemption, so payroll and state/local taxes still apply.

Second, qualifying tips in traditionally tipped industries get a parallel exclusion (with higher-income phaseouts), alongside an expansion of the employer FICA tip credit into additional service lines (think massage parlors and barber shops).

The creation of temporary exclusions for overtime pays and tips could mean no tax on these types of income. Employer-provided child care credit is now enhanced by increasing credit percentage for child care expenses.

Estate and Wealth Transfers

Changes impacting estate taxes and gift exclusion thresholds could affect how you pass down wealth. Under the new tax law, federal estate tax basic exclusion is raised to $15 million per individual (or $30 million for many married couples via portability), a sizable increase from the 2024 level.

Mainstream coverage notes this change as one of the headline individual provisions affecting high-net-worth planning, with implications for lifetime gifting, generational transfers, and whether families accelerate or defer wealth-transfer moves.

Foreign Income and Offshore Holdings

New rules around bringing money back from overseas might create tax liabilities, or new planning opportunities. The OBBBA replaces the GILTI regime with “net CFC tested income,” eliminates the QBAI exclusion, and substitutes FDII fundamentally changing how U.S. multinationals calculate and report foreign income.

These changes limit income eligible for preferential treatment and increase compliance burdens for U.S. shareholders of foreign corporations and offshore investors

SALT Cap Adjustments

The law raises the state-and-local-tax (SALT) deduction cap to as much as $40,000 for certain filers replacing the flat $10,000 cap from 2018 to 2025. The higher cap eases pressure for married filers in high-tax states – but it is not a blanket repeal! Planning still matters because the expanded cap interacts with other itemized-deduction dynamics.

How Does this Affect Your Business?

Because OBBBA is a wide-ranging law with different effective dates and income-based phaseouts, the right moves won’t be one-size-fits-all.

Many households will want to revisit withholding and quarterly estimates; employers should refresh payroll configurations, tip/overtime substantiation, and employee communications; and businesses should re-score 2025–2026 capital projects, R&D roadmaps, and owner-comp strategies to reflect the revived expensing rules and a durable QBI regime.

If you report as a public company or attract institutional investors, bake these changes into guidance and non-GAAP metrics so period-over-period computations make sense.

The last time a major tax reform passed, businesses underestimated its reach: entity structures got altered and international reporting shifts rippled in a shocking way. So, what’s the lesson here? Proactive planning with a trusted expert goes a long way. Waiting until rules are finally ratified leaves you playing defense in the long run – and not much else.

Take note that the bill is now a law, so the clock is ticking! So, plan smart, and plan NOW. With the right partner, you can protect your position, optimize your filings, and unlock new opportunities in the face of reform. Unified Global stands ready to help clients navigate every change with clarity and confidence.

Our multi-certified CPAs are here to help you with:


Tax Strategy
and Planning

Proactive planning for individuals and businesses to mitigate impact

Tax
Consultation

Provide insights on key provisions that might impact your next big move

Accounting and
Bookkeeping

Real-time financial visibility and GAAP-compliant reporting

Technical
Accounting

Revenue recognition, lease accounting, ASC 606/842 expertise

Legal
Support

Entity structure reviews, contract risk analysis, and regulatory navigation



Not sure how the bill might affect you? That's what Unified Global is here for.

Unified Accounting

goes beyond basic bookkeeping. We manage everything from multi-entity consolidations and accrual adjustments to financial close processes, cash flow analysis, and reconciliations. For business owners, that means clearer numbers, faster reporting, and less back-office stress. Whether scaling up or staying compliant, we bring high-level efficiency to every ledger.

Rigel Kent D. Mansueto, CPA, is a Tax Manager at Unified Global with 14 years of combined audit and taxation experience across the U.S., Australia, and Asia. He has overseen hundreds of federal and state filings, resolved complex sales and use tax cases, and led cross-border audits for industries ranging from banking and insurance to real estate and retail.

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