Author: Brian Lund
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If your employer leaves overtime out of one W-2 box, you cannot claim the $12,500 deduction
A worker who logged overtime in 2025 could reconstruct the number without any help from the payroll department. Pay stubs, a calendar and a little arithmetic were enough, and the figure went on the tax return whether or not it showed up anywhere on the W-2. That option is gone for 2026. The number now…
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Humana ends its Ohio State and James Cancer Center contract on October 1
Medicare’s fall enrollment window and a major hospital network change are about to reach the same central Ohio households at almost the same moment. Humana members who get their care at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center or The James Cancer Center will be out of network before that enrollment window even opens. The…
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The subsidy that held Medicare drug-plan premiums down ends after 2026, lifting the 2027 benchmark to $41.33
If you carry a standalone Medicare drug plan, the only question that really matters each fall is whether your premium is about to move and by how much. The answer for 2027 begins with a figure that never appears on a bill: a national benchmark Medicare uses to split the cost of the drug program…
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NV Energy is refunding more than $63 million to customers billed at the wrong rate
The mistake happened the day the power was switched on. When service was first set up at thousands of Nevada apartments, duplexes, townhomes and condos, the accounts were tagged with the wrong rate class — billed as single-family houses instead of multifamily homes — and every bill after that quietly charged the higher rate. Now…
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$500 toward an Ohio electric bill is available to income-eligible households through September 30
Ohio’s summer cooling help is in its final stretch. The Home Energy Assistance Program’s Summer Crisis window opened July 1 and closes September 30, and everything about it runs through an appointment with a local energy assistance provider, booked by phone or online. For income-eligible households, including any household with a member 60 or older,…
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Losing a Medicare Advantage plan opens a Medigap right that expires 63 days later
When a Medicare Advantage plan shuts down or stops serving your area, federal law hands you something valuable with a short fuse: the right to buy a Medigap policy that an insurance company cannot refuse you. The clock on that right runs out 63 days after your old coverage ends. Most people have never heard…
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A new IRS process erases some late penalties automatically after three clean years
For as long as most taxpayers can remember, getting the IRS to forgive a late-filing or late-payment penalty meant asking for it: a phone call, a written statement, or a formal abatement request, followed by waiting to hear back. Starting this summer, for people and businesses with a clean recent record, that entire ritual disappears.…
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$5 billion in unclaimed property sits in Pennsylvania, owed to one in ten residents
Start with the odds, because they are better than almost any other place you could look for money. In Pennsylvania, more than one out of every ten residents is owed cash the state is holding and actively trying to give back. Not a lottery ticket, not a sweepstakes: real dollars from old accounts and uncashed…
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The dependent care FSA limit rises from $5,000 to $7,500 in 2026
Sometime this fall, a benefits portal will ask working families a deceptively small question: how much of next year’s pay should be set aside, before taxes, for the care that makes working possible? For years the ceiling on that answer barely moved; for 2026, it jumped by half. The account is the dependent care flexible…
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DC Water pays nearly $217,000 over an older worker replaced by someone younger
He was an experienced member of the human resources department at the water utility serving the nation’s capital — by the federal government’s account, a high performer with no warnings in his file. In September 2023 he was fired anyway, and government lawyers said the person hired into his place was substantially younger and less…
