2026 NC Tax Season Insights
NC is something else. Some thoughts:
Not to get too technical, but every state has to decide how far they’re going to go along with federal tax law and where they’re going to diverge and do their own thing. It’s a process called “decoupling”.
NC decouples on quite a few things from federal tax law so there are quite a few adjustments to make.
The last time NC drove a stake in the ground and said “here we are” was Jan 1, 2023. What’s happened since then? (Or what hasn’t happened since then?)
There was no tax law change for Helene.
There was no tax law change for the WNC wildfires.
There has been no tax law change for the new OB3 (One Big Beautiful Bill).
These events obviously have made many business and personal changes, but hey, NC, what day is it? 1/1/23….
There was a law in play to help with tax penalties related to Helene with overwhelming bipartisan support but then some idiot wanted to extend credit union powers and attached his/her little red wagon to that bill and derailed it. Why is this even a thing? Why is it allowed? I do not understand politics. So anyway, nothing got done.
So what now? The NC legislature reconvenes for a “short session” on 4/21/26. Yes, after the tax filing deadline. Not until then? Apparently not. Special session? Not likely. Can they even consider tax legislation in a short session? Who knows?
All this to say that for some of you, we may be filing an extension of your NC tax returns to make sure of what’s what.
Some things won’t matter. NC doesn’t tax social security at all, so a technical correction on the federal social security question won’t matter.
Some things are not likely to matter. NC has never gone along with federal bonus depreciation so I don’t look for that to change now.
But I will be keeping up with things and if it sounds like major tax changes will be in play, I will recommend that we extend your return until we find out what’s going to happen.
If you don’t want to extend, we can certainly go ahead and file, but if the tax law changes, we may need to file an amended return.
Please remember that an extension of time to file is not an extension of time to pay. If you do not pay the tax that we think will be due (or if we miss that mark), you will be charged penalties and interest for any payments due but not made by 4/15/26.