Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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The IRS answered 9.9 million of 48.1 million calls last filing season
Filing correctly is only half of what many households need from the IRS; the other half is a live person on the phone when something goes wrong. During the 2026 filing season, the agency fielded 48.1 million of those calls and put a telephone assistor on the line for just 9.9 million of them. For…
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More than 14 million returns were suspended in processing this filing season
Roughly one in every ten individual returns filed with the Internal Revenue Service in 2026 never moved straight from submission to refund. An automated filter caught the return, froze it for additional review, and left the filer waiting on money that rent, groceries or a medical bill might already depend on. The National Taxpayer Advocate’s…
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Interest on unpaid federal tax stays at 7% a year for the quarter starting October 1
A tax balance left unpaid past its due date keeps growing every single day, not just every quarter, and the growth rate for the final three months of 2026 will not change from where it sat over the summer. The Internal Revenue Service has confirmed that the rate charged on individual underpayments — and paid…
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An extension moved the October filing date, not the April payment date
A common mix-up trips up filers every extension season: requesting more time to file a 2025 tax return did not buy more time to pay what was owed on it. Form 4868 pushed the paperwork deadline out to October 15, 2026, but the amount owed still came due back on April 15, and the IRS…
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The IRS charges 5% of unpaid tax for every month a return is late, capped at 25%
A tax return filed one day past its due date and a return filed five months late face completely different arithmetic, and the gap between them is where the Internal Revenue Service keeps its steepest civil penalty on the books. The failure-to-file penalty adds 5% of the unpaid tax for every month or partial month…
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Veterans rated totally disabled and caregivers of children 13 and under are exempt from the Medicaid work rule
A veteran with a total VA disability rating and a grandmother raising her eleven-year-old grandson have one thing in common under Medicaid’s new work rule: neither has to prove eighty hours of monthly activity to keep coverage. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services built nine categories of exemption into the interim final rule it…
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Medicaid enrollees aged 19 to 64 in 43 states must document 80 hours of work a month by January 1
Medicaid’s yearly renewal has always meant proving income and residency again. Beginning January 1, 2027, adults age 19 to 64 in 43 states and the District of Columbia will also have to prove they worked, trained, studied, or volunteered for at least 80 hours in a given month, or earned enough to clear an income…
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A Medicare plan that is not renewed gives members until the end of February to choose another
A Medicare Advantage, Part D, or Medicare Cost Plan insurer sometimes exits a market rather than renewing its contract with Medicare for the coming year, and the notice arrives by mail with little warning about what happens next. Members in that plan do not lose coverage overnight, but they do lose that plan once the…
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Medigap Plan G rate filings for 2026 ran from 12% to more than 26% at six large carriers
A batch of rate filings submitted to state insurance regulators at the start of 2026 shows how differently six of the largest sellers of Medicare Supplement insurance are pricing the same policy. On Plan G, the version most Medigap buyers choose, the smallest of the first-quarter increases ran just over 12 percent; the largest topped…
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Every Medicare drug plan must let enrollees spread out-of-pocket drug costs across monthly payments
A prescription that runs $600 at the pharmacy counter in January no longer has to be paid in one sitting under a federal requirement that now covers every Medicare drug plan in the country. The Medicare Prescription Payment Plan, first required by the Inflation Reduction Act for the 2025 plan year, lets a Part D…