The financial news that actually matters
When a suburban Cook County, Illinois, homeowner opened his 2025 reassessment notice and saw an 18-percent jump with no changes to the property, he did what a growing number of taxpayers are doing: he logged into the county’s SmartFile portal, uploaded photos and sales data from three nearby houses, and submitted the whole thing in…
Consider a 65-year-old single filer who retired in January 2026, has not yet claimed Social Security, and is living off savings. Her modified adjusted gross income for the year will land around $40,000. She wants to convert $30,000 from her traditional IRA to a Roth. Combined MAGI: $70,000. That keeps her under the $75,000 phaseout…
A 28-year-old gig worker in Texas who never filed a 2022 return. A retired teacher in Ohio whose W-2 sat in an unopened envelope. A college student in California who did not know a part-time job entitled her to a refund. All of them had money waiting at the IRS, and none of them collected…
A taxpayer who owes $10,000 on a 2025 federal return and blows past the April 15, 2026, deadline without filing will owe a $500 penalty after just one month. After five months, that penalty hits $2,500, the maximum 25% allowed under IRC §6651. A second taxpayer who owes the same amount but files on time…
Open your payment dashboard from a gig platform or check your brokerage statement, and you might notice roughly a quarter of your earnings never showed up. No audit letter. No penalty notice. The money is already with the IRS, automatically siphoned because the Social Security number your payer has on file does not match what…
If you claim the standard deduction, every dollar you gave to charity over the past four years earned you exactly nothing at tax time. You could write a check to your church, fund a food bank, or send money after a hurricane, and the IRS treated it the same as if you had spent it…
A rideshare driver logging 20,000 miles a year just picked up an extra $500 in tax deductions without changing a single route. That is the practical effect of the IRS raising its standard business mileage rate to 72.5 cents per mile for 2026, up 2.5 cents from the 2025 rate of 70 cents. The new…
Tax professionals across the country are flagging the same problem this filing season: retirees who prepared their own 2025 federal returns checked the “65 or older” box on Form 1040, claimed the higher standard deduction, and stopped there. What many of them did not realize is that a separate, brand-new deduction worth up to $6,000…
When Carla Mendez, a high-school counselor in Grand Rapids, Michigan, borrowed $80,000 in federal PLUS loans to send two children through college, she expected the standard 10-year repayment plan to cost roughly $930 a month at the 7.5% interest rate on her loans. After consolidating and enrolling in Income-Contingent Repayment, her payment dropped to about…
A freelance graphic designer in Austin who earned $9,000 in April and May but set nothing aside for taxes is about to owe the IRS a quarterly installment, and the clock is ticking. The second quarterly estimated tax payment for 2026 is due June 15. Anyone who skips it or comes up short will be…