Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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Taxpayers in federally declared disaster areas have until February 1, 2027, not October 15
Most taxpayers who requested extra time on their 2025 return are working toward the same date: October 15, 2026. For households living inside nine separate 2026 disaster declarations — an earthquake in Hawaii County, wildfires that have burned across Nebraska since March, a typhoon in the Northern Mariana Islands — that date does not apply…
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The IRS replaced its January guidance on overtime in August, and anything written from the old version may be wrong
Guidance issued in January on this year’s new overtime tax break has since been retired by the Internal Revenue Service itself, and the fine print of that swap matters more than a routine update usually would. On August 6, 2026, the IRS published Fact Sheet 2026-13, stating outright that it supersedes Fact Sheet 2026-01, the…
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A return claiming the senior, tips, overtime or car loan deduction is wrong without the new Schedule 1-A
The One, Big, Beautiful Bill created four new individual deductions for the 2025 tax year: no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, a car loan interest deduction, and an enhanced deduction for people age 65 and older. All four now run through a single new IRS form, and a return that claims any of…
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A leased vehicle never qualifies for the new car loan interest deduction, but a refinanced loan still does
The Internal Revenue Service has drawn a bright line between two of the most common ways households finance a car, and it works against nearly half of them. A new deduction for interest paid on vehicle loans, created by the 2025 tax law commonly called the Working Families Tax Cuts, excludes lease payments entirely from…
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Workers at a law firm, medical practice or accounting business cannot take the new tips deduction at all
A new federal deduction lets tipped workers write off as much as $25,000 in tip income starting with the 2025 tax year, part of a package of individual tax breaks Congress passed last year. The deduction phases out above $150,000 of modified adjusted gross income for single filers and $300,000 for joint filers, according to…
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Medicare picked 15 more drugs for price negotiation, and for the first time some are given in a doctor’s office
Medicare’s drug-price negotiation program entered a new phase on January 27, 2026, when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services named 15 more high-cost prescriptions for its third round of price talks, plus one existing drug picked for the program’s first-ever renegotiation. In the first two rounds, every selected drug came out of Part D,…
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Medicare Advantage plans must mail a cancellation notice by October 1 or 90 days before the plan ends
Every fall, a handful of Medicare Advantage insurers decide not to bring a plan back for the following year, and federal law spells out exactly how much warning members are owed before that happens. The rule works on two clocks at once: a rolling 90-day minimum tied to the plan’s actual end date, and a…
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A Medicare Advantage grocery card will be checked against the shopping cart at the register starting in 2027
Millions of Medicare Advantage enrollees carry a supplemental-benefit debit card loaded with an annual allowance for groceries, over-the-counter items or other extras. For years, that card only checked where it was swiped — a participating retailer’s terminal — not what actually landed in the cart. A federal rule finalized this spring closes that gap starting…
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Medicaid has received a million free prescriptions of the blood thinner Eliquis under the drug deals
Medicaid programs in every state have received one million free prescriptions of the blood thinner Eliquis since a drugmaker’s pricing deal with Washington took effect, the White House said this week. The prescriptions cost the programs nothing to fill because Bristol Myers Squibb agreed months ago to hand the pills to state Medicaid programs at…
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Meeting the food stamp work rule automatically satisfies the Medicaid one
Two federal safety-net programs are about to share the same yardstick. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services built a bridge into the new Medicaid work requirement that lets a household already proving compliance with food stamp or welfare work rules skip a second round of the same paperwork with a different agency. It is…