Section 179 for a Work Truck Over 6,000 lbs (2026): Worked Both Ways

A work truck gets the full first-year write-off only if all five are true. Check them in this order; a no on any one changes the answer.

Two separate write-offs can expense a qualifying truck in year one. Section 179 is an election you make truck by truck, in any amount up to the limit. Bonus depreciation applies automatically to all property of the same class unless you elect out.

Section 179 can't exceed your taxable income from the active conduct of any trade or business, which includes W-2 wages from a job; the rest carries forward. Bonus has no income limit and can create a loss. That is the main reason a slow year changes which one to use.

A remodeler buys a $68,000 crew cab rated 7,200 pounds with a 6.5-foot bed and puts it to work in March 2026. The mileage log shows 80% business use. Net profit before the truck is $150,000.

Only the business share is deductible, and it is the same base for either write-off. Section 179 takes the lesser of that share, the $2,560,000 limit and the $150,000 of business income. Bonus takes 100% of the share. The other $13,600 is personal and never deductible.

The two paths give the same number on this truck. They part ways in three cases: business income below $54,400, counting W-2 wages (bonus still deducts the full amount; Section 179 carries the excess forward), wanting less than the full write-off (Section 179 can be any amount on one truck), and the states in step 7 that follow one rule and not the other.

Change one fact about the same truck and the answer moves.

After the SUV ceiling, bonus covers the rest. Electing out of bonus leaves 20% first-year MACRS on it. The lighter truck is held to the passenger auto cap times business use.

The short bed costs nothing federally while 100% bonus is available. The 1,400 pounds of GVWR between 7,200 and 5,800 costs $38,160 of year-one deduction; the rest comes back slowly over later years.

The more-than-50% test isn't checked once. It applies every year through the end of the truck's 5-year recovery period, which under the half-year convention reaches a sixth tax year (2031 for this truck), and the evidence is your mileage log: the date, the miles, the destination and the business purpose of each trip, with odometer readings at the start and end of the year. The IRS does not accept estimated percentages.

If business use falls to 50% or less in a later year, you add back to income everything you deducted above what 5-year straight-line would have allowed. Here use drops to 45% in 2028, after 80% in 2026 and 2027; straight-line would have allowed $16,320 of the $54,400.

Detected, then confirmed

Rate by trip date

Sample data. Detected drives wait for confirmation before they count, a logged trip can sit on the job it belongs to, and each trip carries the IRS rate for its own date.

Claiming Section 179 or bonus on a vehicle ends your use of the standard mileage rate for it. Choosing the rate instead in year one keeps it, but then the later switch to actual costs allows straight-line depreciation only. On 18,000 business miles in 2026, split evenly between the two rate periods, the rate gives $13,365.

The $54,400 is depreciation alone; under actual costs you also deduct the business share of fuel, insurance and repairs, which the rate already includes. The rate keeps paying every year you drive, and it builds in depreciation of 35 cents a mile. A contractor who expects to keep a truck many years and drive it hard should run both over the years they expect to own it. For most, the first-year write-off is larger, and it locks the choice.

Selling the truck turns earlier depreciation back into ordinary income, up to the gain. A trade-in is a sale of the old truck and a separate purchase of the new one; vehicle trades stopped qualifying as like-kind exchanges after 2017.

Your state may not follow the federal amounts.