Section 179 of the IRS tax code allows businesses to deduct the full purchase price of qualifying equipment and/or software purchased or financed during the tax year. That means if you buy (or lease) a piece of qualifying equipment, you can deduct the ENTIRE PURCHASE PRICE from your gross income. This incentive created by the US government encourages businesses to buy equipment and invest in themselves.
All businesses that purchase, finance, and/or lease less than $4,270,000 in new or used business equipment during tax year 2025 should qualify for the Section 179 deduction. Also, to qualify for the Section 179 deduction, the equipment purchased or financed must be placed into service between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2025.
When your business buys certain equipment items, it typically gets to write them off incrementally through depreciation. In other words, if your company spends $50,000 on a machine, it could write off about $10,000 a year for five years. Section 179 allows business owners to write off the entire equipment purchase price for the year they buy it.
Section 179 does have its limits—there are caps on the total amount written off ($1,220,000 for 2025) and caps on the total amount of the equipment purchased ($3,050,000 in 2025). The deduction begins to phase out dollar for dollar after a given business reaches the cap, making it a true small- and medium-sized business deduction.1
