Small businesses that run their own payroll are getting their own version of the IRS’s new automatic penalty relief, and the bar for qualifying is measured in quarters, not years. Employers that have deposited payroll taxes and filed on time for twelve consecutive quarters, three straight years on a quarterly clock, will have failure-to-deposit penalties…

The IRS is retiring one of its best-known taxpayer favors. First Time Abate, the penalty waiver that has let millions of otherwise compliant filers erase a single late-filing or late-payment penalty just by asking, is being phased out in favor of a process that requires no request at all. The change affects anyone who has…

Married couples can generally give each other unlimited amounts of money or property without triggering federal gift tax, thanks to what’s called the unlimited marital deduction. That rule doesn’t apply, though, when one spouse isn’t a U.S. citizen. Instead, the IRS caps how much a citizen or resident spouse can give a noncitizen spouse tax-free…

The IRS has finalized the income tax brackets that will apply to money earned in 2026, and the headline number is where the top rate kicks in. A single filer’s income above $640,600, and a married couple’s income above $768,700, is taxed at 37 percent — the highest of the seven marginal rates in the…

Two companies importing the same category of medicine can end up owing wildly different amounts at the border, and the difference isn’t luck. A pharmaceutical tariff signed in April carved out two separate escape routes from its steepest rate, and drug manufacturers have spent the months since deciding which one, if either, to take. One…