Main Street Dollars

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A carton of eggs that cost close to $6 during last year’s bird-flu shortage is cheaper again this fall, but not nearly as cheap as the price farmers are now getting. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service forecasts that farm-level egg prices will end 2026 down 82.1 percent from 2025, while the price…

Pork and poultry are forecast up under 1 percent this year while beef runs 9.8 percent higher

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Stand at the meat case this week and three price tags tell three different stories. Ground beef is pushing toward $7 a pound. A few feet away, pork chops and chicken breast have barely budged all year. That gap isn’t random, and it isn’t a store-by-store fluke — it’s almost exactly what the U.S. Department…

Next year’s grocery forecast is 2.1 percent, with an error band running from minus 5.7 to plus 10.5 percent

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USDA’s Economic Research Service puts next year’s grocery price increase at 2.1 percent. Read one paragraph further in the same August 25 update and that tidy number turns into a range: food-at-home prices could fall 5.7 percent in 2027, or they could climb 10.5 percent, and either outcome would still count as the forecast working…

A 50 percent duty on Canadian whisky, cheese and vehicles has been collected since August 22

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If you buy a bottle of Canadian whisky, a wedge of Canadian cheese, or a car built in Ontario, the importer bringing it across the border has been paying an extra 50 cents on every dollar of that item’s value since August 22. That cost does not stay with the importer. It works its way…

The White House opened a 300,000-ton import window for lean beef trimmings, and the first tranche opened September 1

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If you’ve watched ground beef climb past $6 a pound at the checkout counter, the federal government just made a bet that flooding the market with 300,000 more metric tons of imported lean beef trimmings will pull that number back down. The first chunk of that supply, 100,000 metric tons, became available to importers on…

Six Washington wildfire counties got the same February extension and a refund protection

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in Refunds

If you live or run a business in one of six Washington counties, the IRS just gave you until February 1, 2027 to file returns and pay taxes that would otherwise have been due this fall. That part follows a well-worn disaster-relief script. The overlooked part is a separate, newer rule that changes how much…

Storm-hit households in 21 Indiana counties now have until February to file and pay

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in Taxes Made Simple

Carroll County lost power lines and roads to straight-line winds. Parts of Marion County flooded. By the time the storms that started on August 11 finished moving through Indiana, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had a disaster number attached to the damage, and the IRS had a new deadline for the people living with the…

Anyone with income the IRS never withheld from owes the next installment September 15

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in Taxes Made Simple

A retired teacher pulling $2,400 a month from an IRA, a rideshare driver who cleared $5,100 in July, and a household that collected $3,800 in dividends and capital gains this summer have nothing in common on paper — except that none of them had a dollar withheld from that money. Under IRS rules, all three…

One Indianapolis silver plan went from $316 a month to $546 in two years

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in Insurance

In 2025, a 40-year-old earning $65,000 a year in Indianapolis paid $316 a month for an Anthem silver plan after a federal tax credit brought the price down. This year, with that credit gone, the same plan costs $477 a month. Insurers have now filed rates for 2027 that would push it to $546 —…

Insurers told regulators in writing that about four points of next year’s increase is the expired subsidy

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