The financial news that actually matters
Millions of Americans who paid late-filing or late-payment penalties on federal tax returns between 2020 and 2023 may be entitled to get that money back from the IRS. But the window to act is closing fast: the deadline to file a claim is July 10, 2026, roughly 51 days away. The Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS),…
Thousands of taxpayers who paid late-payment penalties on their 2020 or 2021 federal returns may be sitting on unclaimed refunds worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The catch: the window to claim that money closes on July 10, 2026, roughly 52 days from the date of this article’s publication. After that, any refund you…
The average American household is now paying roughly $1,500 more per year because of import tariffs imposed since early 2025, according to the Wharton Budget Model at the University of Pennsylvania. That figure, drawn from the research group’s updated analysis published in February 2026, accounts for two federal court rulings that struck down portions of…
A federal gas-tax holiday sounds like relief. For the average American family, it would amount to about $35 over five months, roughly what it costs to fill half a tank. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, introduced the Gas Tax Suspension Act (S. 4485) during the 119th Congress. In May 2026, Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly…
Millions of Americans who paid late-payment penalties on their 2020 or 2021 federal tax returns may be owed money by the IRS, and the deadline to claim it is barely seven weeks away. In late 2023, the IRS announced it was waiving roughly $1 billion in failure-to-pay penalties that had accumulated during pandemic-era collection delays….
A family buying a new refrigerator this spring will pay about $75 more than they would have two years ago, mostly because of tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. Multiply that kind of increase across vehicles, laptops, home wiring, canned goods and medical devices, and the cumulative hit reaches roughly $1,500 a year for the…
If you owe $45,000 in federal student loans and were paying around $150 a month under the now-defunct SAVE repayment plan, your next bill could land closer to $500. That jump hits unless you actively choose a different repayment plan before your loan servicer’s deadline passes, and the clock is already running. Starting as early…
A family filling up a 15-gallon tank once a week for five straight months would save about $35 under President Trump’s proposed federal gas tax holiday. That comes to roughly $1.70 per trip to the pump, less than the price of a large coffee, and it assumes the savings actually reach consumers in full. Economists…
A U.S. wine importer recently recovered roughly $110,000 from Customs and Border Protection after a tariff reclassification changed the duty rate on bottles the company had already brought into the country. No publicly available Customs records document the specific transaction, the product classification involved, or whether the refund resulted from a formal exclusion petition or…
A parent who borrowed $40,000 in federal Parent PLUS loans to help a child finish college could be paying $593 a month on a standard repayment plan by this fall. That same parent, earning $55,000 a year, might pay closer to $200 a month under the only income-driven option ever available to Parent PLUS borrowers….