Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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Fewer than one in 200 returns used the free federal filing tool.
Treasury’s own math on the government’s free federal e-filing tool comes down to one blunt fraction: fewer than one in every 200 tax returns filed for tax year 2024 went through Direct File. That single number, buried in a report Treasury sent Congress last October, is the central justification the department gives for suspending the…
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Home insurance is set to hold flat or fall this year in five states.
Home insurance premiums are on track to rise again nationwide in 2026, but not everywhere. New projections show five states are bucking that trend entirely, with average premiums expected to hold flat or actually fall slightly by the end of the year even as the national average climbs. It is a rare bright spot in…
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The IRS is telling households to protect tax and financial records now, before a disaster makes them impossible to replace.
With hurricane season still active and wildfire risk elevated across parts of the West, the IRS used the first week of National Preparedness Month to make an unusual pitch: treat your tax paperwork like an emergency supply. The agency’s September 3 reminder, IR-2026-104, walks through what to protect and how, on the theory that a…
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Guam’s food stamp maximum for a family of four is $1,507, almost $500 above the mainland figure.
A family of four applying for SNAP in Guam qualifies for a bigger maximum monthly benefit than an identical family in the 48 contiguous states, and the gap is substantial: $1,507 a month versus $1,023, under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s newest cost-of-living update. That’s a difference of $484, or roughly $5,800 over a full…
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California buyers get three days to return a used car to the dealer starting October 1, with new disclosure rules attached.
California is about to give used-car buyers something almost no other state offers: a real, no-questions-required window to change their mind. Starting October 1, 2026, a buyer who drives home in a used vehicle priced at $50,000 or less gets three calendar days to bring it back to the dealer and cancel the deal. For…
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Alaska, Hawaii and Guam all get bigger food stamp shelter deductions than the mainland.
Every SNAP household’s food benefit is calculated off net income, and one of the biggest deductions in that math is for shelter costs that eat up more than half a household’s income after other deductions are applied. Starting October 1, 2026, the cap on that deduction is rising across the board under USDA’s newest cost-of-living…
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An identity protection PIN shuts a stolen Social Security number out of a fake tax return, and the IRS pushed it again on September 4.
The IRS and its partners in the Security Summit are once again steering taxpayers toward a simple tool that can stop identity thieves from filing a tax return in someone else’s name. On September 4, 2026, the agency issued IR-2026-106, the fourth release in its “Protect Your Clients; Protect Yourself” summer series, urging both tax…
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Seniors filed 42,271 crypto complaints last year, losing $4.35 billion.
Cryptocurrency is now the single largest loss category the FBI tracks for older Americans, bigger than the report’s separate figures for investment fraud, romance scams and tech-support cons. In its newly released 2025 Internet Crime Report, the bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center found that people 60 and older filed 42,271 complaints referencing cryptocurrency last year,…
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Nearly 30 percent of people who lost money to a scam last year say it started on social media, adding up to $2.1 billion.
New federal data single out one channel as the costliest way scammers reach people’s wallets: social media. The Federal Trade Commission reported that in 2025, nearly 30% of people who told the agency they lost money to a scam said it started on a social media platform, with total reported losses of $2.1 billion, an…
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The IRS closed its free Direct File tool, leaving the older Free File partnership as the government’s free filing route.
The IRS’s experiment with a government-run, free tax-filing tool is over, at least for now. Treasury told Congress in an October 2025 report that the IRS would suspend Direct File, and a follow-up federal audit released this March confirms the tool’s own web page now tells former users it is “no longer available.” What’s left…