Category: Changes and Deadlines

Property taxes are one of the few retirement expenses that keep climbing even after the mortgage is gone, rising with local assessments regardless of whether a household’s income has stopped growing. Many states answer that squeeze with programs that freeze or cap what older homeowners owe, holding the tax bill steady even as the home’s…

Two of the most talked-about provisions in the 2025 tax law promised to take taxes off tips and off overtime pay. The slogans were simple; the rules the IRS has since issued are not. Both benefits are deductions rather than a blanket exemption, both come with dollar caps, and both fade out as income rises….

Most people picture Medicaid as coverage for low-income children and working-age adults, and it is. What that picture misses is that Medicaid is also the country’s dominant payer for long-term care, the nursing-home stays and in-home aides that private insurance and Medicare largely do not cover. That is why a spending law aimed at trimming…

The White House spent much of the past year promoting a $2,000 “tariff dividend” for American households, describing it as a direct payout bankrolled by the revenue from import duties. Nearly a year into that pitch, no such check has reached a single household, and the tens of billions of dollars in tariff money that…

Downsizing in retirement is supposed to cut costs, but a smaller house can arrive with a larger property-tax bill if the move resets the home’s assessed value. A handful of states blunt that risk by letting older owners carry a low tax base from the old home to the new one. Where the rules exist,…

A tax that once shadowed every family with a paid-off house and a healthy retirement account now reaches almost no one. Under the tax law enacted in 2025, an individual can pass up to $15 million to heirs in 2026 — and a married couple up to $30 million — before the federal estate tax…

A proposal moving through the Senate would put a tariff rebate in the hands of tens of millions of households, even as President Donald Trump’s own promise of $2,000 tariff checks remains stuck without the legislation it would need to happen. The measure, sponsored by Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, would hand back some…

A retiree who sells a winning stock or fund usually braces for the tax bill on the gain. Far fewer think to glance at the position sitting in the red a few lines down on the same statement. Yet a losing investment, once actually sold, can cancel that taxable gain out dollar for dollar —…

The financial shock of losing a spouse is usually measured in the missing paycheck, pension, or Social Security check. A quieter blow arrives at tax time. When a spouse dies, the survivor’s filing status changes — often to single — and the same household income that was comfortable on a joint return can suddenly carry…

The tax law passed in 2025 created a deduction that lets many tipped workers subtract a large share of their gratuities from taxable income, up to $25,000 a year. It is one of the most talked-about pieces of the package, and it reaches a group of earners that includes plenty of older Americans who wait…