Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Early tax filers are collecting noticeably larger refund checks this season. Through the first week of February 2026, the average IRS refund climbed to $2,290, up 10.9% from $2,065 at the same point a year earlier. The jump reflects both new tax code provisions taking effect for the 2025 tax year and the typical early-season…
A proposed federal regulation published on December 23, 2025, could change how the government intercepts stimulus-style payments, tax refunds, and other federal disbursements to collect outstanding debts. The rule arrives as roughly 1 million taxpayers await special Recovery Rebate Credit payments of up to $1,400, and as speculation grows around a possible $2,000 “tariff dividend”…
Side hustle income triggers a tax bill that catches many earners off guard, largely because the self-employment tax alone adds 15.3% on top of regular income tax. Whether someone drives for Lyft, sells vintage clothing on Etsy, or freelances as a graphic designer, the IRS treats net earnings above $400 as taxable self-employment income. Understanding…
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025, signed into law on July 4, 2025, reshaped the federal tax code with new deductions, higher thresholds, and extended relief from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. But the benefits are not evenly distributed. Independent analyses suggest that upper-income households stand to gain the most from…
The Earned Income Tax Credit, one of the largest federal benefits aimed at working families, sends tens of billions of dollars to eligible filers each year, yet the IRS itself describes it as routinely underclaimed. For the 2025 tax year, the credit can reach $8,046 for households with three or more qualifying children, and that…
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…