One deduction hits this year. The other hits in 2056.

Very differently, and once you see the line the IRS drew, you’ll wonder if someone over there just really likes the word “amortize” and has been looking for an excuse to use it in a sentence.

Points paid to buy your main home can usually be deducted in full, in the year you paid them. The IRS treats these as prepaid interest, and if you meet a handful of conditions — the loan is secured by your main home, paying points is an established practice in your area, you didn’t pay more points than is customary, and you actually funded the points with your own money at or before closing rather than rolling them into the loan — you write off the whole amount on this year’s Schedule A.

Points paid to refinance don’t get that treatment. Instead, they’re amortized — deducted in equal slices over the life of the new loan. Pay $6,000 in points on a 30-year refinance and you deduct $200 a year, not $6,000 this year. Congratulations, you now have a 30-year relationship with a spreadsheet. The logic is that a refinance isn’t acquiring the home; it’s just restructuring debt you already had, and the IRS isn’t handing out a reward for rearranging furniture you already own.

There’s a carve-out. If part of your refinance proceeds went toward substantial home improvements, the points allocated to that portion can be deducted immediately, same as a purchase. The rest still amortizes.

And if you refinance again, or sell, before the amortization period ends, whatever’s left undeducted becomes deductible in full the year the old loan goes away. Even the IRS agrees there’s no point amortizing points on a debt that’s dead.

Since your question was about a purchase, the good news is you’re in the simpler bucket. Assuming you meet the conditions, the points come off this year’s return in one shot, no 30-year commitment required.

👉 See the six-part test that decides your deduction

It splits your business into two separate tax lives for the year, like a Jekyll-and-Hyde situation where both personalities have to file paperwork.

A sole proprietorship can’t elect S-corp status directly. You first need a legal entity — typically an LLC or corporation — then file Form 2553 to elect S-corp tax treatment for it. If you file within 75 days of forming that entity, you can generally set the effective date to match the formation date, which is what most people mean when they say they’re “converting mid-year.”

Once the election is effective, your one business year gets reported on two different forms. Income and expenses from January through the conversion date go on Schedule C, taxed as self-employment income the way they always were. Everything from the effective date forward gets reported on Form 1120-S, the S-corp’s own return, with a K-1 passing your share of the profit through to your personal return.

The entire point of the move is payroll. As a sole proprietor, all your net profit is hit with 15.3% self-employment tax. As an S-corp shareholder-employee, only your salary is subject to payroll tax; profit distributed beyond that isn’t. But the IRS requires that salary to be reasonable — roughly what the market would pay someone else to do your job — and it will re-characterize distributions as wages the moment it suspects you’ve decided your labor is worth minimum wage and your distributions are worth a yacht.

The math only works if there’s enough runway left in the year. Set up payroll, run it correctly for the months remaining, and the S-corp portion of the year starts saving you real money. Convert in November and the compliance costs (payroll processing, a second tax return, probably a bookkeeper) can eat whatever you’d have saved on two months of distributions. You didn’t optimize your taxes; you bought yourself a part-time job as your own HR department.

Talk to a tax pro before you file the 2553. The election itself takes 10 minutes, but that 75-day window from formation is a hard cutoff, not a suggestion — miss it and your “mid-year conversion” becomes a “next January conversion.”

👉 See exactly how fast the IRS wants your paperwork filed

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If you own a business (or you’re building one), this one’s for you.

Yes, assuming it’s the kind of camp the IRS has in mind, and this is a better year than usual to ask.

Day camp qualifies as a work-related expense for the Child and Dependent Care Credit — even themed ones, like a sports camp or an underwater basket-weaving camp — as long as its main purpose is keeping your kid supervised while you and your spouse are working. It doesn’t matter that your child is also learning to swim or building a robot; the IRS cares why you sent them, not what they came home smelling like.

Overnight camp does not qualify, full stop. Publication 503 draws a hard line here: the cost of sending a child to a sleepaway camp isn’t a work-related expense, even for the exact same number of days, even if it’s the only camp with an opening, even if you spent those two weeks getting more work done than you have all year. If a summer covers a mix of day camp and a week of sleepaway, only the day camp portion counts.

The basics still apply: your child needs to be under 13, you (and your spouse, if you’re married) both need earned income for the year, and the camp — like any care provider — needs to go on Form 2441 with its name, address, and taxpayer ID.

Here’s the part that’s actually new this year. Starting in 2026, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act raised the top credit rate from 35% to 50% of qualifying expenses, with the same $3,000 (one child) or $6,000 (two or more) expense cap as before. The rate phases down as income rises — 50% at the low end, down to a 20% floor once household AGI clears roughly $150,000 for joint filers — but even higher earners keep that 20% floor, which is more than the old law guaranteed some of them.

Save the invoice, get the camp’s EIN before you file, and file the sleepaway week under “money well spent, tax benefit not included.” The new rate scale means the credit could be worth more than you’re assuming, depending on where your income lands.

👉 Find out where your income lands on the new 50%-to-20% scale

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