The largest capital investment incentive in a generation is being decided by people who do not know it applies to them. That is not a tax problem. It is a governance problem.

Pull out your company’s capital expenditure approval form. It probably asks for the vendor quote, the payback period, the IRR, maybe a lease-versus-buy line that someone added in 2009. Now look for these four questions. When will this asset be placed in service? Which legal entity will own it? Which party can actually use the depreciation? Was the purchase contract signed before or after January 20, 2025?

If your form is like most, none of them are there. And under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, those four questions now determine more of an asset’s after-tax economics than the purchase price negotiation your procurement team just spent three weeks on.

Our research across 612 finance decision-makers at mid-sized and large companies found that roughly two in three equipment structuring decisions are made before the tax function is consulted. Companies captured an estimated 61% of the OBBBA acceleration value available to them on 2025 capital spending. Among firms spending $20 million or more a year on CapEx, the median company left about $740,000 in present value unclaimed in a single year, measured as the tax savings the new provisions add over the old rules.

That money did not disappear because anyone filed a return incorrectly. It disappeared because the decisions that determine it were made by people who were never asked to think about it.

The Four Decisions Made Without Tax in the Room

The first is the acquisition date. Full bonus depreciation applies to property acquired after January 19, 2025, and acquisition is defined by when a binding contract is signed, not when the equipment arrives. Procurement teams that locked in long-lead equipment in 2024 to secure production slots made a tax decision without knowing it. That equipment is on the old phase-down schedule regardless of when it ships.

The second is the ownership entity. The new 100% expensing election for production facilities requires the taxpayer to use the building in production. A plant owned by one entity and leased to another may or may not qualify depending on how the entities are related. Real estate teams and outside counsel set those structures up for liability and financing reasons, rarely for this one.

The third is the financing structure. Whether a company should own an asset or let a lessor own it depends heavily on whether the company can use the depreciation now. That question is answered by the tax forecast. It is almost always decided by whoever manages the bank relationship.

The fourth is placed-in-service timing. A machine running on December 28 produces a deduction this year; the same machine on January 4 waits a year. Operations controls installation schedules. Treasury controls funding timelines. Neither is typically measured on when the deduction lands.

Why This Keeps Happening

Here is the part most advisors will not say. In most mid-sized companies, the tax department is a compliance function. It is staffed to file accurately, not to shape decisions, and it is rewarded for avoiding mistakes rather than for creating value. Many CFOs came up through FP&A or audit and still see tax as a cost to be minimized rather than a lever to be pulled.

Outside advisors do not fix this, and their incentives explain why. Your accounting firm is paid to prepare the return and defend it. It is not paid, and is rarely positioned, to tell you that the capital program you designed eight months ago left value on the table. By the time it sees the fixed asset ledger, the only remaining question is how to document what already happened. A cost segregation study commissioned after the building is finished is a recovery exercise, not a strategy.

Lenders are no better. A bank’s credit process evaluates your ability to repay. It is indifferent to whether you can use the depreciation on the asset it is financing, and it has no reason to care whether the loan funds before or after December 31.

So the responsibility lands, by default, on nobody.

A Permanent Law Makes It Worse

When bonus depreciation was phasing down between 2023 and 2026, the shrinking percentage forced companies to pay attention. Permanence removed the deadline, and with it the urgency. Decision-makers in our survey described 2025 as a year of claiming whatever showed up on the ledger. A benefit that never expires is a benefit nobody feels obligated to plan around.

What Fixing It Actually Requires

It does not require a larger tax department. It requires moving the tax conversation about six months earlier.

Start with the approval form. Add the four questions above, and require an answer before any asset over a meaningful threshold, perhaps $2 million, goes to purchase order. Make the tax director a required reviewer at that stage rather than a recipient of the results.

Next, build a three-year tax capacity map: projected taxable income, loss carryforwards, interest limitation capacity, and state conformity by jurisdiction. Overlay the capital plan on it every quarter. That single exercise tells you which assets to own, which to lease, and which years can absorb a large deduction.

Then bring your capital partners in before the vendor is selected, not after. A financing source that understands the asset and the timeline can tell you what is executable by year end. One that sees the deal for the first time in November cannot.

Finally, measure the outcome. Boards routinely ask whether a project clears the hurdle rate. Almost none ask whether the company captured the tax value the hurdle rate assumed. Ask that question once and watch how quickly the process changes.

The OBBBA handed American companies a capital incentive of historic size. Most are claiming it the way they claim office supplies. The companies that treat it as a design input will finish this decade with a structurally lower cost of capital than their competitors, and the gap will have been decided in meetings their tax directors were never invited to.