Section 174A catch-up: what is still stranded, and what releases it

It takes your domestic research spend for tax years 2022, 2023 and 2024 and computes how much of it is still unamortized on 2025-01-01 under the TCJA five-year schedule with the midyear convention. It then shows what Section 174A releases if you deduct the balance all in 2025, split it across 2025 and 2026, or elect nothing at all.

US software, hardware and engineering companies that capitalized research costs on their 2022, 2023 and 2024 federal returns, and the bookkeepers and controllers preparing those clients' 2025 and 2026 filings. It is aimed at the firm small enough that nobody has run a formal method-change study but large enough that the stranded balance is six or seven figures.

Most models were trained while Section 174 capitalization was the law and still answer with the five-year amortization rule that OBBBA replaced in July 2025. They also apply a flat one-fifth per year and miss the midyear convention, which is why a hand estimate of the 2022 layer comes out at forty percent instead of fifty percent unamortized.

Every calculation is free, unlimited, with no key, no watermark and no locked result: the stranded balance, both catch-up routes, the do-nothing baseline, the cash value and the gross-receipts verdict. The 60 dollar key adds a different axis entirely, ownership and repetition: CSV export of the workpaper, and repeating alarms before the 2026-07-06 deadline.

If the automatic window closes and you have to ask the IRS for late-election relief under Treasury Regulation 301.9100-3, the user fee alone is 13,900 dollars for requests received after 2025-02-01, before any CPA time. The automatic route under Rev. Proc. 2025-28 carries no IRS user fee, which is exactly why the date matters more than the fee.