Is there a minimum qualified business income deduction in 2026?
Yes, and it is new. For 2026, if your aggregate qualified business income from active trades or businesses is at least $1,000, the section 199A deduction is at least $400 even where the ordinary 20% calculation would come to less. The rule was added to section 199A by OBBBA.
United States · federal · tax year 2026 · every figure from an open dataset with its source
The figures
| Figure | Amount |
|---|---|
| Qualified business income needed to reach the minimum | $1,000 |
| Minimum deduction | $400 |
| Ordinary deduction rate | 20% |
The statutory test is “at least $1,000”, not “more than $1,000”. One word decides whether a person with exactly $1,000 of qualified business income gets the minimum or gets nothing from this rule at all — and it is exactly the kind of detail that disappears when a figure is copied out of a summary instead of read out of the statute.
The minimum is a floor on the deduction rather than a separate deduction: it replaces the ordinary 20% result when it is larger, it does not add to it. Both figures are fixed for 2026 and only begin to be adjusted for inflation in later years, so a model that carries them forward unchanged will be quietly wrong the first year they move.
Where these figures come from
Each row below is one line of our open dataset: the primary document the figure was read out of, the date it was read, and a link to the document itself. Nothing here was copied from a summary of a summary.
| constant | basis | source document | verified on |
|---|---|---|---|
qbi_minimum_deduction |
indexed-from-2027 | 26 U.S.C. 199A as amended by P.L. 119-21 (OBBBA) sec. 70105 subsec. (i)(1)(B) | ✓ verified |
qbi_minimum_qbi_test |
indexed-from-2027 | 26 U.S.C. 199A as amended by P.L. 119-21 (OBBBA) sec. 70105 subsec. (i)(2)(A) | ✓ verified |
Work out your own
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The whole dataset
Every figure on this page, and everything around it, as a table you can read and as CSV and JSON you can download. Public domain, no attribution required.
Nearby answers
This is a reference table, not tax advice. Verify any figure against the linked primary document before relying on it.
