Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
The U.S. tax code already contains tools designed to prevent adversarial nations from benefiting financially through American taxpayers, but gaps in enforcement and scope continue to draw criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The tension between maintaining a globally competitive tax system and ensuring that hostile regimes cannot exploit deductions or credits…
Massachusetts State Auditor Diana DiZoglio has turned a series of state government accountability fights into a direct confrontation with the Legislature, one that could reshape how taxpayers track public spending. Her office identified $12,322,688 in public benefit fraud in a single fiscal year and flagged serious contracting failures in the state’s emergency shelter system. When…
The IRS now requires crypto brokers to report gross proceeds from digital asset sales on a brand-new form, but most of those forms will arrive without the one number that actually determines how much tax you owe: your cost basis. That gap between what the government knows you sold and what you actually paid creates…
Real estate investors are spending thousands of dollars on cost segregation studies, betting that the upfront expense will unlock far larger tax deductions by reclassifying parts of a building into shorter depreciation categories. The strategy can work well for many property owners, but it carries legal risks that are easy to overlook, and the benefits…
The IRS began accepting tax year 2025 returns in January, and for millions of families, the refund math looks noticeably different this year. New provisions under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 have raised standard deduction levels and adjusted child tax credit parameters, prompting a wave of speculation that some refund checks could…
The IRS released its 2026 tax bracket adjustments with little fanfare, but the numbers reflect more than routine inflation indexing. The changes trace back to a specific piece of legislation that alters how tax parameters are set, creating a split outcome: some filers stand to keep more of their income, while others face a heavier…
The new SALT deduction rules signed into law by President Trump hand most filers a higher cap on state and local tax write-offs, but households earning between $500,000 and $600,000 face a sharp and punishing phase-down that could erase the benefit entirely. This income band sits in a policy dead zone: too high to claim…
The Internal Revenue Service is warning tax filers that phone lines will likely see a sharp spike in call volume during the week of February 16, 2026, a period the agency considers one of the busiest stretches of every filing season. For millions of Americans trying to check refund status or resolve account questions, that…
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is urging Albany to raise taxes on high-income New Yorkers and large corporations, arguing that additional revenue should be on the table as state lawmakers consider the city’s fiscal needs. Speaking after the 2026 Joint Legislative Budget Hearing, he said he supports increasing taxes on New Yorkers earning $1 million or more…
The wealthiest people in the United States, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and George Soros, have paid zero federal income taxes in certain years, despite holding fortunes that dwarf the lifetime earnings of most American families. The mechanism behind this outcome is not some shadowy offshore scheme but a structural feature of the U.S. tax…