The financial news that actually matters
If you paid a penalty or interest on a federal tax balance at any point between early 2020 and mid-2023, the IRS may owe you money. The National Taxpayer Advocate believes the pool of affected filers could number in the tens of millions, a figure the Advocate treats as an upper-bound projection rather than a…
Somewhere in the IRS’s systems, a penalty is sitting on your 2022 tax account that may never have been legally valid. If you filed your federal return late that year and paid a late-filing or late-payment penalty, the agency’s own pandemic relief rules may entitle you to a full refund of that charge. But the…
For the first time, millions of tipped workers, overtime earners, and car-loan holders are claiming brand-new federal tax deductions this filing season, and the early results are showing up in refund checks. Through the week ending March 20, 2026, the average federal refund reached $3,571, according to IRS filing-season statistics. That is $3,571 minus last…
The average refund is roughly $750, and about 1.6 million taxpayers were told they would get it automatically. Three years later, an unknown number of those people are still waiting, and the final deadline to claim the money is May 17, 2026. After that, the IRS loses the legal authority to pay it out, no…
Tens of millions of Americans may be owed money back from the IRS for late-filing and late-payment penalties assessed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The problem: most of them don’t know it, and the window to claim that money is closing fast. The National Taxpayer Advocate (NTA) published an analysis in April 2026 warning that “tens…
A bartender in Miami pulling double shifts. A nurse in Houston clocking 50-hour weeks. A delivery driver in Phoenix still paying off a used sedan. For millions of workers like these, tax season brought a noticeably fatter refund check this spring, and a new batch of federal deductions is a big reason why. Through March…
A 55-year-old marketing director earning $160,000 used to stash an extra $7,500 into her 401(k) each year on a pre-tax basis, shaving roughly $1,800 off her annual federal tax bill. That option no longer exists. Starting in January 2026, every dollar of her catch-up contribution must go into a Roth account, taxed upfront, with no…
Somewhere in the IRS’s systems, there are penalty charges attached to millions of taxpayer accounts from the pandemic years. Late-filing penalties. Late-payment penalties. Interest stacked on top of both. A federal court ruled last year that many of those charges should never have been assessed. And the independent office inside the IRS that advocates for…
Married couples filing jointly in 2026 will keep $32,200 of their income completely free of federal tax, up $2,200 from the 2025 standard deduction of $30,000. That bump exists because the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law in the summer of 2025, made the higher deduction levels from the 2017 tax overhaul permanent….
Millions of Americans who paid penalties or interest on federal tax returns filed during the pandemic may be owed refunds they don’t know about. The problem: the IRS has no plans to send the money on its own, and the deadline to claim it is July 10, 2026. The Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent watchdog…