Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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Michigan, Wisconsin and Mississippi storm victims have until November 2 to file and pay
Three separate federal disaster declarations, issued the same day for three different states, have pushed a wide range of tax deadlines to November 2, 2026, for households and businesses in the affected counties. The relief covers late 2025 income tax returns, quarterly payroll deposits and estimated tax payments, all landing on the same date regardless…
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Three tribal nations face a September 28 tax deadline the rest of the country never heard about
For most of the country, tax deadlines closed months ago and will not reopen until next spring. Households connected to three Native American reservations are working from a different calendar entirely. Three separate IRS disaster declarations — covering the Crow Tribe of Montana, the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes, and the San Carlos Apache…
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Hawaii County earthquake victims have until February 1 to file, but the tax owed in April was never postponed
The Internal Revenue Service has given people and businesses in Hawaii County until February 1, 2027, to file federal tax returns delayed by the earthquake that struck the Big Island in May 2026. For anyone still dealing with earthquake damage, an extension like that can feel like the whole tax calendar has been pushed back.…
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Wisconsin processed 97 percent of its food stamp applications on time while Alaska managed 64
Federal law gives every state the same deadline for approving a household’s food stamp application: 30 days for a standard case, seven days for a family that qualifies for expedited help because it has almost no income or savings coming in. In practice, some states hit that mark nearly every time, and others miss it…
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Guam cleared only 60 percent of its food stamp applications on time
Guam’s food stamp office closed out fiscal year 2025 with the worst on-time record of any Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program office in the country. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only 60.33 percent of the territory’s SNAP applications were processed within the federal deadline, the lowest rate among the 53 state and territorial agencies…
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A new order tells the Agriculture Department to look again at what a Product of USA label on beef means
An executive order signed at the White House on September 4, 2026, sends the Department of Agriculture back to review a label that shows up on packages of ground beef and steak in nearly every supermarket in the country. Executive Order 14425, “Supporting America’s Ranchers,” does not change what that label means today. It gives…
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The government no longer measures local utility inflation, so a national water and trash figure now sets part of the rent ceiling
Every year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sets a number for nearly every metro and county in the country called the Fair Market Rent. It is not a suggestion. It is the ceiling that decides how big a monthly rent subsidy a Housing Choice Voucher household can get, and it feeds into…
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Housing agencies must cut the rent ceiling on emergency vouchers back to 110 percent of the local standard
Public housing agencies that run two pandemic-era rental assistance programs just lost the extra room they’ve had for years to stretch a voucher into a pricier apartment. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has ordered every agency administering Emergency Housing Vouchers and Stability Vouchers to bring the most it will subsidize on a…
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Brent crude averaged $91 a barrel last month, $7 more than the month before
Oil turned meaningfully more expensive in August, and the federal government’s own energy statisticians have the number. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that the Brent crude oil spot price, the global benchmark that shapes most of what drivers pay at the pump in the United States, averaged $91 a barrel for the month, up…
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The government expects diesel stockpiles to fall below 100 million barrels in October, a first since 2003
The U.S. Energy Information Administration said this week that the nation’s stockpile of diesel fuel is on pace to fall below 100 million barrels in October, a level the country has not seen since 2003. The forecast, published in EIA’s September Short-Term Energy Outlook, means the fuel that moves nearly every truck, train and tractor…