Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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Homeland Security says elder fraud cost more than a million older Americans about $2 billion last year
Elder fraud cost more than a million older Americans about $2 billion in 2025 alone, according to a Homeland Security Investigations official quoted in a federal indictment announcement out of Seattle. The estimate came attached to a specific case: five men accused of laundering more than $7.4 million in stolen funds taken from at least…
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Settlement checks mailed August 31 become worthless on November 30
A round of settlement checks tied to a 2022 corporate data breach went into the mail on August 31, 2026, and for anyone who has not yet deposited theirs, the clock is now running. The administrator overseeing the payout says any check still sitting uncashed after Monday, November 30, 2026 becomes void, turning real money…
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A car loan only cuts taxes if the vehicle was assembled in the United States
A car loan can now shrink a tax bill, but only if the vehicle underneath it rolled off a factory line inside the United States. The “no tax on car loan interest” provision, part of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill, lets eligible buyers deduct up to $10,000 a year in loan interest on a personal-use…
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The tip deduction excludes anyone whose job was not on an IRS list by December 2024
A server, bartender or valet can now deduct a good chunk of tips from federal taxable income, but the tax break only reaches workers in jobs the IRS has formally recognized as tip-based. The rule, part of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill’s “No Tax on Tips” provision, runs through 2028 and lets eligible workers deduct…
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Three tribal nations face a tax deadline of September 28, two weeks before everyone else
Members of three tribal nations across Montana and Arizona have until September 28 to file federal tax returns postponed by separate storms, two and a half weeks ahead of the October 15 deadline everyone else on extension is working toward. The IRS issued the relief in three separate notices covering the Crow Reservation, the Fort…
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Twenty-one Indiana counties, including Indianapolis, now have until February 1, 2027, to file
Households and small businesses across 21 Indiana counties, including Marion County, home to Indianapolis, now have until February 1, 2027, to file a range of federal tax returns after storms that began August 11 triggered a federal disaster declaration. The relief, issued by the IRS as Notice IN-2026-01, follows a FEMA declaration covering severe storms,…
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Treasury told Congress the IRS will suspend Direct File, which cost $138 a return
The Direct File pilot let taxpayers prepare and submit a federal return straight to the IRS at no cost, without a commercial software company in the loop. It is being shut down. In a report delivered to Congress this fall, the Treasury Department stated that the IRS will suspend Direct File, pointing to the program’s…
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About 98 million households qualified to file their taxes free, and 2.7 million did
Filing a federal tax return does not have to cost a household anything, yet most people who qualified for the free option skipped it last year. The Treasury Department’s own count, delivered to Congress this fall in a report on the future of free filing, put the number of households eligible for the IRS Free…
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Audits of people earning over $400,000 fell 27 percent while nonfiler notices nearly doubled
Two numbers moved in opposite directions inside the IRS this year, and both point in the same direction for taxpayers: enforcement is shifting away from face-to-face audits of high earners and toward mass-mailed notices. Examinations of people with more than $400,000 in income fell 27 percent from fiscal 2024 to fiscal 2025, even as the…
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The IRS filed 592,800 tax returns for people who did not file their own
The IRS’s program for building a tax return on someone else’s behalf closed 592,800 cases in fiscal year 2025, more than double the 252,100 it closed two years earlier. The jump reflects a pandemic-era program coming back online rather than a new crackdown, but the mechanics matter to anyone who has gone a year or…