Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
For once, tax season is delivering a pleasant surprise. A combination of a major court ruling on tariffs and sweeping federal tax changes means some Americans now qualify for thousands of dollars in unexpected refunds, on top of already larger checks forecast for 2026. The windfall will not reach everyone, but for households and businesses…
Tax season is colliding with a wave of structural shocks at the Internal Revenue Service, and the tremors are landing hardest on hundreds of thousands of ordinary filers. A decade after hackers penetrated the agency’s systems to pull detailed returns on more than 300,000 people, fears of sabotage, political or criminal, are again shaping how…
Side hustles have shifted from fringe gigs to a core income source for millions of Americans, and the tax system is racing to catch up. The Internal Revenue Service is zeroing in on this booming stream of earnings, using new data tools and reporting rules to match what platforms and payment apps show against what…
Tesla has confirmed that it paid no federal income tax on $5.7 billion in United States profits in 2025, despite reporting billions in domestic earnings and enjoying strong demand for its electric vehicles. The result is not an accounting error but the product of a corporate tax system that allows highly profitable companies to drive…
President Donald Trump is turning a massive legal clash with the tax authorities into a political and public relations spectacle, floating the idea of settling his $10 billion claim and handing the money to charity. The president has framed the lawsuit as a test of government accountability after the leak of his tax returns, while…
President Donald Trump has opened a new front in his long running battle over his finances, filing a lawsuit that seeks at least 10 billion dollars from the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department. The complaint accuses federal officials of failing to protect his confidential tax information and allowing it to leak to news…
President Donald Trump’s new $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department is framed as a historic bid to hold Washington accountable for a massive breach of taxpayer privacy. The case centers on a former IRS contractor who admitted leaking Trump’s tax information, along with data from some of the wealthiest…
President Donald Trump has opened a new front in his long running war with the federal bureaucracy, filing a $10 billion lawsuit that accuses the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department of presiding over one of the most damaging breaches of taxpayer confidentiality in modern history. The complaint, brought alongside his two eldest sons…
Oregon regulators have ordered a high-cost lender to return hundreds of thousands of dollars to residents after finding the company charged interest rates that violated state law. The case forces a rare look under the hood of a business model that thrives on borrowers’ financial distress and tests how far the state is willing to…
Millions of Americans were told they would not be punished for falling behind on their taxes during the pandemic, only to discover later that a technical failure inside the Internal Revenue Service quietly cut them out of that relief. Instead of automatic penalty forgiveness, some taxpayers saw unexpected bills, smaller refunds, or no refund at…