Six months into 2026 and the corporate landscape looks nothing like it did twelve months ago. Not slightly different — fundamentally rearranged. The companies your clients work for, invest in, or own have been navigating a convergence of forces that doesn’t happen often: a major tax overhaul, an AI-driven restructuring wave, a record M&A market, and a tariff environment rewriting cost structures in real time.
For high-income earners and business owners, watching from the sidelines isn’t a neutral position. Here’s what has actually happened — and what it means.
The Workforce Didn’t Just “Tighten.” It Got Cut.
Start with the number that keeps coming up: 55,000. That’s how many jobs companies directly attributed to AI in 2025 alone — more than twelve times the number cited just two years earlier, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. By early 2026, a second wave had hit. The names on the list:
- Amazon — eliminated 14,000 corporate roles, citing AI-driven efficiency
- Workday — cut 8.5% of its workforce (~1,750 people), reallocating toward AI investments
- Chegg — laid off 45% of staff in October 2025, citing “new realities of AI”
- HP — announced plans to cut between 4,000 and 6,000 jobs by end of year
- CrowdStrike — cut ~500 positions as it leans into AI-driven security models
Wall Street banks plan to remove approximately 200,000 jobs over the next three to five years, especially in entry-level and back-office roles. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan has publicly stated that technology now allows the bank to “do more with the same amount of people or less people” — while staffing still makes up 60% of operating expenses.
To be fair: AI-linked cuts accounted for only about 4.5% of total layoffs in 2025. Most evidence suggests the impact so far is limited and uneven. The rest comes from cost-cutting, tariff exposure, and overhiring during the 2021–2022 boom. But AI has become a useful frame for restructuring that was probably coming anyway — and the pace is accelerating.
The M&A Market Had a Record Year and Kept Going
2025 was a deal year unlike anything since before the pandemic. U.S. M&A volume reached approximately $2.3 trillion — up 49% from 2024 — and the average transaction size hit $227 million, the highest since 1980. “Large deals are driving the market. And when you see big deals, it’s a sign of CEO and boardroom confidence,” said Ivan Farman, global co-head of M&A at Bank of America. The headline deals:
- Netflix acquired Warner Bros. Discovery’s studios and HBO Max — $72 billion
- Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern merger — $72 billion
- Electronic Arts went private — $55 billion
- SpaceX acquired xAI — $250 billion, the largest acquisition ever recorded
Spin-offs ran parallel to the deal activity. General Electric completed its breakup into GE Aerospace, GE Vernova, and GE Healthcare. Honeywell’s aerospace technology spin-off is expected to complete in 2026.
Here’s the tax angle most people miss: when a publicly traded company you hold shares in spins off a business unit, you may receive new shares in the spun-off entity. Whether that event triggers a taxable gain — and how cost basis gets allocated — depends entirely on whether the transaction qualified under IRC §368 as a tax-free reorganization. That determination is not automatic. It requires attention before the deal closes, not after.
The Tax Code Changed — Permanently, in Some Cases
The biggest structural shift affecting companies and their owners didn’t come from a boardroom. It came from Washington.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed into law on July 4, 2025, permanently changed several provisions that had been set to expire. Four changes matter most for business owners and high-income earners:
What Changed | What It Means |
100% Bonus Depreciation — permanent | Full first-year deduction on qualifying property purchased after Jan. 19, 2025. No more multi-year spread. |
20% QBI Deduction — permanent | Pass-through owners (S-corps, LLCs, partnerships) keep the deduction. Phase-out thresholds raised to $75K single / $150K MFJ. |
21% Corporate Rate — permanent | Flat rate locked in. Retaining earnings at the corporate level is now a legitimate long-term strategy. |
R&D Expensing — restored | Domestic R&D costs fully expensed in the year incurred, rather than amortized over multiple years. |
The OBBBA also raised and indexed the SALT cap through 2029 and expanded SECURE 2.0 retirement plan credits for small-business owners. For clients in California, New York, and New Jersey, the SALT change has a direct effect on whether itemizing actually saves money.
The part most people miss: none of these benefits are automatic. Bonus depreciation requires the right purchase timing and documentation. The QBI deduction requires attention to W-2 wages and property basis. R&D expensing requires contemporaneous records. The businesses that will benefit most are the ones whose advisors are working through the implications now — not at tax time.
What the Tariff Environment Has Done to Company Structures
Companies with significant import exposure — retail, manufacturing, consumer electronics — faced three uncomfortable choices: absorb the cost, pass it to consumers, or restructure supply chains at significant capital expense. Most are doing some combination of all three.
For business owners, the relevant question is how that cost pressure flows into vendor structure, entity type, and depreciation strategy. A business that accelerates capital expenditure to build onshore capacity is now operating in a tax environment where 100% first-year expensing applies. That overlap isn’t coincidental. It’s a planning window.
What This Means for You
The restructuring wave, the deal activity, the tax law changes — they all point to the same question: is your financial structure optimized for the environment that actually exists right now?
- You hold equity in a company going through M&A or a spin-off — tax treatment of what you receive varies by deal structure. Basis, timing, and character of gain need to be sorted before a transaction closes.
- You own a pass-through business earning above $175K — the QBI deduction is real money, but it requires active management of W-2 wages and property basis. If your advisor hasn’t walked you through the 2026 mechanics, ask them to.
- Your business is planning a capital expenditure in the next 12 months — 100% bonus depreciation changes the timing calculus. This year versus next year is a meaningful difference.
- Your household income dropped due to corporate layoffs — mid-year income changes create planning windows for Roth conversions, charitable contributions, and timing strategies that don’t exist in a stable income year.
The Common Thread
The companies at the center of this mid-year story — restructuring, acquiring, spinning off, responding to a new tax code — have teams whose only job is to understand how each change affects the bottom line. They’re not reacting. They’re planning.
That kind of financial clarity isn’t exclusive to corporations. It’s available to individuals and business owners too. But it requires working with advisors who are actually paying attention to what’s changing — not just filing returns.
