Author: Brian Lund
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The tip and overtime break is a deduction claimed on a return, so payroll taxes still come out of every check.
A line cook picks up his first paycheck after hearing that Congress passed a law wiping out taxes on overtime, and nothing about the check has changed. The federal income tax withholding line looks the same. The Social Security and Medicare lines look the same. That isn’t a payroll error. The relief created by the…
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IRS data consent speeds an income-driven student-loan application.
Applying for an income-driven student loan plan has always meant proving what you earn, and for years that meant digging up pay stubs or a tax transcript and uploading them by hand. The Department of Education says there’s now a faster path built into the same application: give the department permission to pull the number…
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The Repayment Assistance Plan matches on-time payments so balances fall.
Every income-driven student loan plan before this year had the same quiet flaw: a borrower could make every payment on time and still watch their balance grow, because the payment wasn’t large enough to cover the interest piling up each month. The Department of Education says its new Repayment Assistance Plan is built to close…
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Auto pay is the department’s answer to missed payments, and 120 of them is what public workers need for forgiveness.
Borrowers working toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness have one job: rack up 120 qualifying, on-time monthly payments while employed full time by a government agency or qualifying nonprofit. The Department of Education says the single easiest way to avoid the missed payment that can slow that count is enrolling in automatic payments, and the agency…
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Borrowers still parked in the shut-down SAVE plan are being moved onto Standard repayment this month, often at a higher monthly bill.
The SAVE repayment plan hasn’t been a legal option for federal student loan borrowers since a court order ended it in March 2026, but millions of borrowers were still parked inside it while the Department of Education worked out what came next. That transition is happening now. Servicers began notifying the plan’s roughly 7.5 million…
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National Payroll Week is the IRS’s cue for a withholding checkup.
The IRS marked the start of National Payroll Week, observed September 7 through 11 this year, with a reminder that the week is as much a nudge for workers as it is a tribute to the people who run payroll. In a release issued September 4 (IR-2026-105), the agency encouraged employees to take a fresh…
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A Labor Department proposal would rewrite who counts as an independent contractor, and workers reclassified that way would lose overtime and minimum-wage rights.
The U.S. Department of Labor wants to rewrite the rule that decides who counts as an employee and who counts as an independent contractor under federal wage law, and that single label determines who is guaranteed overtime pay and a minimum wage and who is not. The department’s Wage and Hour Division published the proposal…
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The extra point off a student-loan rate runs only through June 30, 2028, and only on Direct Loans made after July 1, 2012.
The federal government’s newest student loan discount comes with a shelf life. Borrowers who keep their payments on auto pay get a full percentage point knocked off their interest rate, but the Department of Education built two hard boundaries into the offer: a calendar cutoff on how long the discount lasts, and a loan-vintage cutoff…
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The same contractor test would be extended to family and medical leave and to farmworker protections, well beyond the wage law it was written for.
A federal proposal aimed at rewriting who counts as an employee versus an independent contractor under wage law would not stop at wage law. The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division wants the same classification test it is proposing for the Fair Labor Standards Act to also decide who is covered under the Family…
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The federal Tiered Standard plan now sets a payoff of 10, 15, 20 or 25 years based purely on the size of the balance.
Federal student loan borrowers who pick the new Tiered Standard repayment plan no longer get one fixed payoff timeline. Since July 1, 2026, the plan sorts every borrower into one of four repayment lengths, 10, 15, 20 or 25 years, based entirely on how much they owe, not their income, their job, or how fast…
