Author: Elizabeth Blessing
-
Filing late costs 5 percent of unpaid tax each month and tops out at 25 percent
Thursday, October 15, 2026, is the extended deadline for 2025 federal income tax returns, and a return that misses it starts collecting a penalty of 5 percent of the unpaid tax for every month or part of a month it is late. The charge stops growing at 25 percent. The IRS also sets a minimum:…
-
Direct Express cardholders have no published date when Comerica-issued cards stop working
The Treasury Department’s Direct Express page, last updated September 1, 2026, does not mention Comerica Bank at all, and no federal or program page checked on October 3, 2026 gives a date when Comerica-issued Direct Express cards stop working. The silence matters because Fifth Third Bank bought and merged with Comerica earlier this year, and…
-
Customs suspended the $800 duty-free limit and a $40 overseas parcel can now carry duty
A package worth $800 or less used to cross the border without duty, which meant a $40 trinket ordered from an overseas seller usually arrived with no customs bill. That changed in June. U.S. Customs and Border Protection published two interim final rules on June 24, 2026, indefinitely suspending the exemption in 19 U.S.C. 1321(a)(2)(C)…
-
USDA’s September forecast for 2027 food prices is a 2.0 percent rise on a range from minus 2.7 to 7 percent
Grocery and restaurant prices in 2027 are forecast to rise 2.0 percent over the year, but the government economists who made the call attach a forecast interval running from a 2.7 percent decline to a 7.0 percent increase. That range is the real content of the forecast. A midpoint of 2.0 percent describes the center…
-
Zillow says renting beats buying by $12,792 a year nationally, and wins in all 50 big metros
A modelled comparison from Zillow, published September 16, 2026, puts a dollar figure on the gap between renting and buying: $12,792 a year in favor of the renter, measured on a national basis. The same analysis finds that in each of the 50 largest U.S. metros the typical rent is lower than the typical monthly…
-
HUD is selling reverse mortgages on dead borrowers’ homes without FHA insurance and bids close October 27
Bids for roughly 4,200 reverse mortgage loans that HUD holds on vacant homes are due before 1:00 p.m. Eastern on October 27, 2026. The sale, called HVLS 2027-1, covers loans with a combined balance of about $1.3 billion, and the Federal Register notice that announced it states one term that sets it apart from ordinary…
-
Federal flood insurance loses its authority on December 11 and nearly 4.5 million policies ride on it
Section 139 of a stopgap spending law moved the expiration of the National Flood Insurance Program’s authority from September 30 to December 11, 2026, which leaves a little over two months before Congress has to act again. The Congressional Research Service says the program insures nearly 4.5 million policies, a count it takes from FEMA…
-
A federal judge threw out five states’ SNAP soda restrictions and USDA has appealed
A civil case captioned Nieves Aragon et al. v. Brooke Rollins now carries two filings that explain the state of the SNAP soda and candy restrictions: a June 22, 2026 order from a federal district court in Washington that threw out five states’ waivers, and an August 20 notice that the Justice Department, on USDA’s…
-
CMS put about a quarter of Original Medicare into a mandatory drug-pricing experiment and named no ZIP code
“Medicare Part B patients and American taxpayers have paid significantly more for prescription medications than people in comparable countries,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said when the agency announced a new mandatory payment model on September 30. The model, called GLOBE, reaches about a quarter of people with Original Medicare, and the rule that creates…
-
CMS is mailing 2027 Medicare handbooks that say they do not contain 2027 prices
Page 12 of the Medicare & You 2027 handbook carries a sentence that a reader hunting for next year’s costs will not want to find: “The 2027 premium amounts, drug costs, and income limits weren’t available at the time of printing.” The handbook goes to Medicare households each fall, and Open Enrollment opens on October…