Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Tax rules usually punish you for changing course, especially when you touch life insurance or annuities with built up gains. Section 1035 of the Internal Revenue Code quietly flips that script, letting you swap one qualifying contract for another without immediately handing a slice of your growth to the IRS. Used well, it can turn…
President Donald Trump is wagering that the most generous tax refund season in U.S. history will double as a campaign message, turning the One Big Beautiful Bill into a tangible payoff for voters. The administration is touting projections that refunds could reach between $1,000 and $2,000 per household and pump roughly $65 billion into the…
California’s long running “Water’s Edge” tax regime has quietly shaped how multinational corporations report profits and how much they contribute to the state budget. A new proposal from Assemblymember Damon Connolly would scrap that framework, forcing companies to bring more of their global income into the state tax base and potentially reshaping who pays for…
Amazon, Meta and Alphabet are turning a once‑in‑a‑generation tax overhaul into a powerful financial lever, shrinking their federal bills even as profits and capital spending surge. The combination of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and a breakneck build‑out of artificial intelligence infrastructure is letting these companies convert data centers and research labs into immediate tax…
Kansas lawmakers are weighing a sweeping tax shift that would scrap traditional property taxes and replace them with a new surcharge on most retail purchases. The proposal, framed as relief for homeowners and farmers squeezed by rising valuations, would gradually erase one of the state’s most entrenched revenue streams and lean instead on what Kansans…
Eight states have just pushed through sizable income tax cuts that will reshape paychecks and state budgets starting with the 2026 tax year. I focus here on the states that either lowered rates or set themselves on a path to eliminate the tax entirely, explaining what changed and why it matters. Together, these moves deepen…
Your paycheck may look unchanged in 2026, but the rules that decide how much of it you keep are shifting under your feet. The One, Big, Beautiful Bill and its companion provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act are quietly rewriting key pieces of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, altering inflation adjustments, deductions,…
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is treating the drive to erase property taxes as a five-alarm fire, not a routine policy fight. He has warned that wiping out this revenue could force something like a 20 percent sales tax, a shift that would land hardest on everyday shoppers rather than on wealthier homeowners. The clash is…
Los Angeles shoppers are still adjusting to a county sales tax that already jumped to 9.75 percent in many communities, yet local leaders are now weighing another half‑cent increase that would land squarely on everyday purchases. The proposal is framed as a lifeline for a health care system facing deep federal cuts, but for families…
For years, many Americans have treated their checking account as a kind of offstage area in the tax system, a place where money moves but the Internal Revenue Service only occasionally glances. That mental model is badly outdated. Between new reporting rules for payment apps, long‑standing cash deposit alerts and aggressive tools for collecting old…