The financial news that actually matters
Covers tax laws, government policies, fiscal changes, and financial regulations. It explains how policy decisions affect personal income, businesses, and the economy.
Workers deciding whether a job counts as a tipped occupation now have a fixed list to check. Final Treasury and IRS regulations name more than 70 separate occupations, grouped into eight categories, that customarily and regularly receive tips, running from bartenders to water taxi operators. The list decides who can use the deduction for qualified…
The 2025 tax law created two new deductions with the same end date: $6,000 for people 65 and over and up to $10,000 a year in car-loan interest, each available for tax years 2025 through 2028 and then gone unless Congress acts. The IRS describes both as deductions from taxable income, open whether or not…
The IRS has postponed federal filing and payment deadlines to February 1, 2027 for twelve entries on its disaster-relief list, including wildfire-hit parts of Washington state and five separate Nebraska declarations. None of the twelve covers a whole state. Each is limited to named counties, islands or tribal governments, so a taxpayer’s address decides whether…
Taxpayers who filed an extension for their 2025 federal returns have until October 15, 2026 to file, and a return filed more than 60 days past its due date carries a minimum failure-to-file penalty of $525 or 100 percent of the tax owed, whichever is less. The figure comes from the IRS failure-to-file penalty page,…
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) estimated in a report dated July 27, 2026 that the IRS made about $21.1 billion in improper Earned Income Tax Credit payments in fiscal year 2025. The figure is an estimate, produced by the IRS and assessed by the watchdog, and it makes the credit by far…
The Congressional Budget Office now projects that changes in trade policy leave total federal deficits $0.9 trillion larger over the 2027 to 2036 period than it projected in February. The estimate comes from a budget office update on tariffs, and it moves the fiscal picture in the opposite direction from the one many tariff debates…
Four sets of disaster-area taxpayers share the same postponed federal tax date: Nov. 2, 2026. Mississippi, Wisconsin, Michigan and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands each carry that deadline on the Internal Revenue Service’s disaster-relief index, which the agency last reviewed on Sept. 16. With the date about a month away, the postponement is…
Filing fees for the EB-5 immigrant investor program are set to rise by about 71 percent on average on Nov. 30, according to a final rule from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The agency puts the weighted average increase at $2,945.90 per filing. The change covers petitions from individual investors as well as applications from…
Early October is when savers start asking what the next year’s retirement plan limits will be, and the Internal Revenue Service has not answered yet. The most senior figure on its 401(k) limits page is $83,250, the 2026 combined ceiling for workers aged 60 to 63 who take the enhanced catch-up. Nothing on that page,…
Treasury and the IRS estimate that the new federal scholarship tax credit could draw nearly $26 billion a year in qualified contributions by 2030. The figure arrives with the proposed rules published this week and rests on assumptions about how many states, charities and taxpayers take part. It is a forecast attached to an enacted…