Section 174A R&D Catch-Up Check 2026

What it does. You give it three numbers -- domestic research spend for tax years 2022, 2023 and 2024 -- plus your marginal rate and your average gross receipts. It returns the balance still unamortized on 2025-01-01, what each Section 174A route releases in 2025 and 2026, how much of that is genuinely pulled forward rather than merely rescheduled, what the 2025 deduction is worth in tax cash, and whether the retroactive amended-return route is open to you at all. Why the hand estimate is wrong. The TCJA five-year schedule for domestic research expenditures runs on a midyear convention: the year of the spend gets 10 percent, the next four years get 20 percent each, and the tail 10 percent lands in year six. People amortising in their head use a flat one-fifth. On the worked example the difference is not decorative -- the 2022 layer is 50 percent stranded, not 40; the 2023 layer 70 percent; the 2024 layer 90 percent. On 420,000 / 610,000 / 880,000 that is 210,000 + 427,000 + 792,000 = 1,429,000. Why 2026 and not some other year. OBBBA added Section 174A, restoring immediate deduction of domestic research expenditures for tax years beginning after 2024-12-31. Rev. Proc. 2025-28 set the procedure: the stranded balance may be deducted entirely in the first tax year beginning after 2024-12-31, or ratably across 2025 and 2026, as a Section 481(a) method change. Separately, a small business meeting the Section 448(c) test -- average gross receipts not above 31,000,000 -- may elect Section 174A retroactively for tax years 2022, 2023 and 2024 on amended returns or AARs, and that door closes on the earlier of 2026-07-06 or the Section 6511 refund window for the year in question. For most 2022 returns the refund statute is the binding cutoff and it closes first. The three routes, side by side. On the worked example: elect nothing and 2025 releases 382,000. Take the catch-up all in 2025 and it releases 1,429,000 -- 1,047,000 more, worth 300,090 at a 21 percent rate. Split it and 2025 and 2026 take 714,500 each, worth 150,045 of 2025 cash. Which one wins depends on your rate in each year and on Section 163(j), because Rev. Proc. 2025-28 treats the released amount as amortization for the business-interest limitation. The extension does not pick for you; it puts all three on one screen so you can. What is free. All of it. Every calculation, any spend, any rate, unlimited, with no licence key, no watermark, no trial counter and no locked result. The popup and the web page run the same compute function. What the $60 key adds. A different axis: ownership and repetition. CSV export writes every input, the per-year unamortized split and all three routes to a file you keep and hand to your preparer. Deadline alarms fire ahead of 2026-07-06 and ahead of your own return due date. Neither one gates an answer. Privacy. Your numbers never leave the browser. The only outbound request the extension ever makes is licence-key validation against api.polar.sh, and only after you paste a key. Same package, three stores. Chrome Web Store, Microsoft Edge Add-ons and Firefox AMO ship from the same zip.