There is a federal tax credit that reimburses small businesses for half of what they spend removing barriers to access, and most owners we talk to have never heard of it. It is called the Disabled Access Credit, it has been in the tax code since 1990 under section 44, and you claim it on one form, IRS Form 8826.
Who Qualifies
You are eligible if either of these was true in your previous tax year, gross receipts of $1 million or less, or 30 or fewer full-time employees. One is enough. A company with 45 employees and under $1 million in receipts qualifies. So does a company with 10 employees and $3 million in receipts.
The headcount test has a definition inside it that catches people out, and it can work in your favor. For this credit, somebody counts as full-time only if they worked at least 30 hours a week for 20 or more calendar weeks in the year. A shop with forty part-time staff, none of them hitting that, has zero full-time employees for these purposes and qualifies on headcount whatever its revenue looks like.
The Math
The credit is 50% of eligible spending above $250 and up to $10,250 in a tax year, so the maximum credit is $5,000. Spending below $250 does not count, and spending above $10,250 stops adding anything. Work it through on our own price and you get the shape of it. A $499 audit gives $249 of creditable spend, a credit of about $125, and a net cost near $375. Spend $10,250 or more and the credit is the full $5,000.
This is a credit rather than a deduction, which is the part worth understanding properly. It comes off your tax bill rather than off your taxable income, so a dollar of credit is worth a whole dollar. It is also part of the general business credit, which means a business with no tax to pay this year does not simply receive it as cash.
What Counts, and the Honest Catch
Eligible expenditures are amounts paid to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and here is the catch your accountant will raise if we do not. The statute was written in 1990, it ties eligibility to the ADA as it stood on the day it was enacted, and it does not name web accessibility work anywhere. It also conditions eligibility on standards set by Treasury regulation, and no such standard mentions web content.
So an audit is a defensible fit rather than a certainty. Removing communication barriers and making visually delivered material available are both listed categories, which is the argument for it. We are not going to tell you it is settled, because it is not, and every source we could find that says otherwise sells accessibility products. Print the pricing page and this post, take both to your accountant, and let them make the call.
The Part People Miss, Which Is That It Resets
The cap resets every tax year. An audit this year and remediation work next year can each earn the credit in their own year, and for a larger project that timing is worth planning rather than discovering.
You will see section 190 mentioned alongside this credit constantly, and we are going to be straight with you about what it is. Read the statute and it covers expenditure on making a facility or a public transportation vehicle you own or lease more accessible. Architectural and transportation barriers, in its own words. It allows up to $15,000 a year as a deduction rather than a credit and it has no size test, which is why it gets quoted at every business. It is not written about websites, and an expense has to qualify under a provision on its own terms before anybody can claim it there. So section 190 is the right question to put to your accountant about your building. It is not a second way to write off a web audit, and the two provisions cannot both be claimed for the same dollars.
Run your own numbers
The free calculator does the eligibility check and the arithmetic in about ten seconds. For a business inside the thresholds, not claiming this is handing the IRS money it never asked you for. This is not tax advice, and the eligibility question above is real, so bring your accountant.