The financial news that actually matters
If you live in one of 25 states and earn a paycheck reported on a W-2, you can now file your federal tax return directly with the IRS, online, for free. No TurboTax. No H&R Block. No credit card required at the last step. The agency’s Direct File tool, which debuted as a 12-state pilot…
Replace five drafty windows and install a heat pump in the same year, and the federal government will hand you up to $3,200 off your tax bill. That is not a rebate check in the mail. It is a dollar-for-dollar credit against the income tax you owe, covering 30 percent of what you spend on…
A married couple earning $90,000 this year will owe federal income tax on only $57,800 of it. The reason: the standard deduction for joint filers jumped to $32,200 for tax year 2026, up $2,200 from last year’s $30,000. Single filers now subtract $16,100 (up from $15,000), and heads of household get $24,150 (up from $22,500)….
A year ago, a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Austin listed for around $1,650 a month. Today, a comparable unit in the same neighborhood can be had for closer to $1,550, and often with a month of free rent thrown in. That kind of price cut would have been laughable during the pandemic-era bidding wars. Now…
A New Jersey homeowner paying $18,000 in property taxes and $14,000 in state income taxes has been writing off barely a third of that bill on her federal return since 2018. Starting with the 2026 tax year, she can deduct every dollar of it. The federal cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions is…
June 15 is 24 days away, and for anyone who earns money without an employer withholding taxes, that date is a hard payment deadline. Miss it by even one day and the IRS begins charging an underpayment penalty on June 16, plus interest that compounds daily. Worse, this particular penalty comes with a catch that…
When Maria Gonzalez of Ashburn, Virginia, opened her April 2026 electric bill, she thought there had been a mistake. The total: $247 for a three-bedroom townhouse, up from $182 the same month a year earlier. That is a jump of roughly 36%. “I called Dominion and asked if my meter was broken,” she told a…
A buyer financing a $38,000 pickup truck at 7.5% interest will pay roughly $5,700 in loan interest during the first year of the loan. Starting with 2025 tax returns, that full amount could come straight off the buyer’s federal tax bill, thanks to a new deduction for auto-loan interest tucked into the One Big Beautiful…
Picture a retired teacher in Ohio pulling $95,000 a year from her pension and Social Security, comfortably below Medicare’s surcharge threshold. She converts $20,000 from a traditional IRA to a Roth, a routine tax-planning move. Two years later, her monthly Part B premium jumps from $202.90 to $284.10. The notice from the Social Security Administration…
If you were born in 1960 or later and you turn 62 this year, a decades-old change to Social Security law is finally catching up with you. For the first time, every American reaching the earliest claiming age in 2026 has a full retirement age (FRA) of 67, not 66 or 66 and a few…