What actually changed for owner-managers in 2026

Three things changed for owner-managers in 2026, and one loudly didn’t. Bill C-15, which became law on March 26, 2026, reinstated the accelerated investment incentive, added immediate expensing for a short list of productivity assets, and widened the SR&ED credit. The capital-gains inclusion rate stayed at 50% — the 2024 proposal to raise it was abandoned in 2025.

That is where things stand as of August 2026. Everything else you have read about is either a number that moves every year or a proposal that never became law. We update this page when the rules move, not on a schedule.

The first-year write-off is back

Capital cost allowance — CCA, the tax system’s version of depreciation — makes you deduct most equipment over years rather than all at once, and normally cuts the first year’s deduction roughly in half under what’s called the half-year rule. The accelerated investment incentive suspends that haircut and gives you a larger first-year deduction instead. It had been winding down. Bill C-15 brought it back.

Who this touches: anyone whose purchases get capitalized rather than expensed. Line equipment, a delivery van, shop fittings, automation on a production floor. If you buy things that show up on a depreciation schedule instead of an expense account, this is your change. It matters most to manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors, where a single machine can outweigh a quarter of payroll.

The timing angle is the whole thing. The deduction attaches to the year the asset becomes available for use, not the year you signed the order or paid the deposit.

Three kinds of asset now come off in full

For a narrow list, Bill C-15 goes further than an enhanced first-year rate: computers · data-network infrastructure · patents. These are expensed immediately, meaning the full cost lands against the year’s income with no schedule behind it.

The list is the point. This is not a general write-off for anything that plugs in — it is aimed at productivity-enhancing assets, and most equipment is still on the accelerated-CCA path described above. It reads as written for software and IT services businesses: a re-racked server room, a network refresh, a patent bought rather than built. Whether a given purchase fits the definition is a question about the asset, not about your industry.

The purchase date is not the date that counts

Illustrative, round numbers, December 31 year-end.

Your corporation buys C$60,000 of computers and network hardware. Expensed immediately, the full C$60,000 comes off 2026 income. Federal tax on active business income inside the small-business limit runs 9% on the first C$500,000, so the federal saving is C$5,400, with provincial tax on top at a rate that depends on where you file. Now order the same hardware on December 28 and leave it boxed until January 3. It is a 2027 deduction. Same money, one year later.

The deduction is not bigger for being early. It is earlier. What early buys you is the use of that tax for a year and a cleaner picture going into the next one — which is why the conversation about a big purchase belongs in October, not in the following June when the return is being prepared.

SR&ED got wider, and some corporations newly qualify

SR&ED — the scientific research and experimental development credit — changed in two ways that matter to owner-managed companies. Capital expenditures are eligible again, after years in which only current costs counted. And the enhanced 35% credit, which had been squeezed out as a corporation’s taxable capital grew, now phases out over a taxable-capital range of C$15 million to C$75 million. Both apply to expenditures made on or after December 16, 2024.

That backdated start is the useful part. The first question is not whether to claim this year; it is whether you have already spent money that qualifies. Two groups should look: corporations that crossed the old taxable-capital line, stopped getting the enhanced rate and quietly gave up claiming, and anyone who bought test or lab equipment since late 2024 and put it through as ordinary CCA without a second thought.

We do not prepare SR&ED claims. Those go to specialists, and we work alongside them. What we do is notice the spending in your books while there is still a paper trail for the specialist to work with, which is a different job and an easier one to do early.

The capital-gains rate didn’t move, and that is the story

The inclusion rate is 50%. Half of a capital gain is taxable income; half is not. The 2024 proposal to raise it was abandoned in 2025, after roughly a year in which owners triggered gains, accelerated sales and reorganized on the assumption that a higher rate was coming.

Some of that hedging cost real money — tax paid years earlier than it needed to be, on gains that could have kept compounding inside the corporation. The mechanics did not change. What changed is how the next announcement will be read. A proposal is a proposal until it is law, and 2024 is now the example everyone reaches for.

Two numbers that moved because they always move

A vehicle that meets the tax definition of a passenger vehicle goes into Class 10.1, where CCA is calculated on a capped capital cost rather than on what you actually paid. Buy a C$70,000 car through the corporation in 2026 and you depreciate C$39,000 of it. The rest is simply not deductible, which is one of the reasons the buy-versus-lease question turns out differently than owners expect.

The lifetime capital gains exemption is indexed too. It sits at C$1,275,000 for 2026 dispositions of qualified small-business-corporation shares. It only pays out at a sale, but the tests that decide whether your shares qualify are met or missed years before that — which makes it a structural question, not a closing-day one.

The four figures this piece turns on, in one place:

What’s worth checking before your year-end

Four things, and none of them take long. The available-for-use date on anything bought in the last quarter, because that date and not the invoice decides the year. How your capital purchases since Bill C-15 were classified, because a machine coded to the wrong class gets the wrong first-year rate. Whether any research or development spending since December 2024 was recorded in a way a SR&ED specialist could still reconstruct. And your filing calendar itself — the T2, the corporation’s income tax return, is due six months after year-end, June 30 for a December year-end, with the balance of tax generally due sooner than the return. The full set of dates is on our deadlines table.

What Cadence does

We confirm the CCA class and the first-year rate before you commit to a purchase, and we check the available-for-use date rather than the invoice date, so the deduction lands in the year you were expecting it to. That work sits inside tax planning and advice and happens before the decision, not after the return. SR&ED claim preparation we refer out, but we will tell you when your spending looks worth a specialist’s time. Starting fees for all of it are published on our pricing page.