Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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The IRS closed 430,900 substitute returns last year without ever reaching the taxpayer
Late last month, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration published its annual look at how the Internal Revenue Service handles people who never filed a tax return, and one figure stood apart from the rest. Of the 592,800 substitute-return cases the agency closed in fiscal year 2025, 430,900 closed without the IRS ever making…
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When someone does not file, the IRS files for them, and the substitute return carries no deductions
A person who never sends in a tax return does not stop a tax bill from being calculated. Under Internal Revenue Code Section 6020(b), the Internal Revenue Service can prepare a return on that person’s behalf using only the income already reported by employers, banks and other payers. The resulting document, called a substitute for…
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The IRS charges 7 percent a year, compounded daily, on anything still unpaid after October 15
Every quarter, the Internal Revenue Service recalculates the interest rate it charges on tax bills that go unpaid, and for the final quarter of 2026 the number did not move. Individual filers who still owe money after October 15 — the deadline for anyone who requested a filing extension back in the spring — will…
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A Trump executive order tells the VA to pull military medical records from a service member’s first day
President Trump signed a new executive order on September 8 directing the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of War to share a service member’s personnel and medical records starting the day that person enlists. For decades those records have typically moved between the two departments only after separation, often taking months to arrive…
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Eight months on, Trump’s Great Healthcare Plan is still only a request to Congress
Eight months after the White House unveiled what it branded the Great Healthcare Plan, the proposal sits exactly where it started: a list of asks aimed at Congress, not a change written into federal law. The plan promises lower drug prices, lower insurance premiums, and new rules for large insurers, and the administration has kept…
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Every state Medicaid program applied to Trump’s drug-pricing model, and the last holdouts have until September 30
Every Medicaid program in the country has filed an application for a new federal prescription drug pricing model, and federal regulators say most have already gone a step further and signed on for good. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said on September 18, 2026, that all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia…
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Trump’s ban on certain Canadian alcohol and dairy starts September 29, and the product list gained all-terrain vehicles on September 15
Two changes to Canadian trade rules land on different dates this month, and both trace back to the same legal authority. Import bans on certain Canadian alcoholic beverages and dairy products take effect September 29, 2026, turning what has been a steep tariff into an outright prohibition on those goods entering the United States. A…
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Novitas improperly paid $19.5 million for Medicare services in nursing homes
A newly released federal audit shows how the private company that processes Medicare’s paperwork across much of the country let millions of dollars in incorrect nursing-home billing go through unchecked for a full year. Investigators reviewed a sample of the specific kind of Medicare Part B claims filed on behalf of people living in nursing…
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Methodist Hospital did not agree to repay the $12.4 million a federal audit says Medicare overpaid it
A federal audit released this month found that Methodist Hospital received at least $12.4 million in Medicare overpayments over a two-year stretch of billing, and the Hospital has told investigators it does not owe most of that money. The finding comes from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, which…
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Medicare’s 2027 premium still does not exist three weeks before enrollment opens
Medicare’s annual enrollment window is approaching, and millions of households will soon start comparing plans for next year. One number they will not have in hand yet is the 2027 Part B premium, deductible or income-related monthly adjustment amounts, the figures that determine what enrollees actually pay each month starting in January. The Centers for…