Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Tipped workers across the United States could see a new tax break under the No Tax on Tips Act, which creates an above-the-line deduction allowing eligible employees and self-employed individuals to subtract up to $25,000 in qualified tips from their taxable income. The deduction applies to tax years 2025 through 2028, meaning the first returns…
The IRS opened the 2026 tax filing season on January 26, expecting roughly 164 million individual returns, but early processing numbers and a federal watchdog report suggest refund delays could hit harder than usual this year. For the week ending February 6, returns processed fell 12.3% compared with the same period last year, even as…
The Internal Revenue Service warned taxpayers about “ghost” tax return preparers in its 2025 Dirty Dozen list of tax scams, saying these paid preparers may lure filers with promises of inflated refunds, then disappear without signing the return or leaving traceable identification. The scheme shifts full legal liability onto the taxpayer while the preparer pockets…
The IRS enforces a set of overlapping deadlines that determine how far back it can review a tax return, assess additional tax, and pursue collection. Most taxpayers assume the agency has only three years to act, but specific exceptions can stretch that window to six years, ten years, or eliminate it entirely. With the IRS…
The “No Tax on Car Loan Interest” provision signed into law as part of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill lets individual taxpayers deduct interest paid on qualifying auto loans for tax years 2025 through 2028. On paper, the break can shelter up to $10,000 in annual interest from federal income tax. In practice, reaching that…
President Trump’s sprawling tax package, signed into law last summer as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, contains a provision that many retirees may have overlooked: a $6,000 deduction for Americans aged 65 and older, effective starting with 2025 tax returns. For married couples where both spouses qualify, the deduction doubles to $12,000. With tax…
High-income earners across the United States are using rental real estate losses to offset six-figure salaries, turning a little-known provision buried in the Internal Revenue Code into one of the most effective legal tax reduction strategies available, and the mechanism hinges on qualifying as a “real estate professional” under Section 469(c)(7) of the tax code,…
The federal government is phasing out paper tax refund checks starting September 30, 2025, a shift that could reshape how millions of Americans receive money from Washington. The change, driven by an executive order aimed at modernizing Treasury payments, arrives alongside a separate wave of tax cuts that some financial professionals say could make future…
The Internal Revenue Service began sending automatic payments of up to $1,400 each to roughly 1 million taxpayers who filed 2021 returns but failed to claim the Recovery Rebate Credit they were owed. Those payments, part of a program totaling approximately $2.4 billion, started going out in December 2024 and were expected to arrive by…
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act made three popular tax breaks unavailable after 2025, raising effective tax burdens for many families, workers, and small business owners. The Internal Revenue Service confirmed in its tax year 2026 inflation adjustments that personal exemptions remain at zero for tax year 2026. What the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs…