The financial news that actually matters
A new washing machine costs more this spring. So does a car, a laptop, and the copper wiring inside a house under construction. The reason traces back to a series of tariff actions that, taken together, now represent the largest effective tax increase on American households since President Clinton signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act…
If you paid IRS penalties on your 2020 or 2021 tax return, the federal government may owe you money, and you have until July 10, 2026, to stake your claim. That is roughly 57 days from mid-May 2026, and once the window closes, it likely closes for good. The IRS has already refunded or credited…
Fill up a mid-size sedan once a week for five months and skip the federal gas tax every time, and you would pocket roughly $35. That is the real-world value of President Trump’s proposal to suspend the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal gasoline tax, based on consumption figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It works out to…
The clock is running out for parents who borrowed federal PLUS loans to pay for a child’s college education. On June 30, 2026, a consolidation window closes permanently, and any Parent PLUS borrower who has not acted by then will be locked out of every income-driven repayment plan the federal government offers. No extensions. No…
A taxpayer who owed $50,000 on a late 2021 return and paid the bill 12 months later would have been hit with roughly $3,000 in failure-to-pay penalties alone. The IRS announced relief for exactly that kind of charge back in January 2024, and millions of people got automatic refunds. But not everyone did. If you…
A taxpayer who paid a $2,400 failure-to-file penalty in August 2024 has until roughly August 2026 to claim a refund. But someone who paid a similar penalty in June 2024 faces a deadline that lands in mid-July 2026, barely two months from now. And once that window closes, the IRS keeps the money for good,…
Trump wants to suspend the 18.4-cent federal gas tax – but the math shows families would save just $35 over five months Fill up a midsize sedan once a week from June through October, and President Donald Trump’s proposed federal gas tax holiday would save your household about $35. Not per month. Total. That figure…
A taxpayer who filed a late 2021 return on a $15,000 balance could have been hit with more than $4,000 in combined IRS penalties. If a federal court ruling from 2024 holds up, that money never should have been charged, and the taxpayer can ask for it back. But the clock is running out: the…
Consider a self-employed taxpayer who owed $10,000 in federal taxes during 2021 and was charged failure-to-pay penalties for 18 months while a COVID-19 deadline extension was technically in effect. That taxpayer may have accumulated roughly $900 in penalties plus daily compounding interest, money the IRS arguably should never have collected. Multiply that across tens of…
Somewhere in the IRS’s records, there is a line item showing a penalty or interest charge you paid during the pandemic. Maybe it was a late-filing penalty from 2020, when your accountant’s office was closed and the mail felt unreliable. Maybe it was interest that piled up on a balance you could not pay while…