Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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The IRS is retiring First Time Abate for automatic penalty relief, so eligible filers no longer have to ask
On July 8 the IRS announced that it is retiring its most widely used penalty waiver and replacing it with a process that grants the same relief before a penalty is ever charged. The old program required a taxpayer to know the relief existed and to ask for it. The replacement, called the Automatic Exemption…
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Michigan renters and homeowners have until September 30 to claim the home heating credit, and a tax extension will not help
The window to claim Michigan’s 2025 home heating credit closes on September 30, 2026, and it closes on postmarks rather than intentions. A claim that leaves the house on October 1 is late no matter how good the reason. That single date governs a benefit that reaches renters as well as homeowners, and it does…
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The Senior Citizens League projects a 3.8% raise for 2027, about $74 a month, but Social Security decides in October
A single figure has been moving through retirement newsletters and social feeds since the middle of July: a 3.8 percent Social Security raise for 2027, worth roughly $74 a month. The figure is real, the arithmetic behind it is ordinary, and the organization that produced it describes it accurately. What gets stripped out in the…
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Minnesota is adding nearly 15% to 2025 homestead refunds, and homeowners who already filed do not need to do anything
The Minnesota Department of Revenue is applying a one-time boost to 2025 Homestead Credit Refunds from inside its own processing system, which means the money reaches most homeowners without a form, a request, or a phone call. A return that is already on file gets recalculated on the state’s side, and the larger refund goes…
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Owners of 60,720 recalled backyard zipline kits can claim a refund after at least 20 riders were injured
A backyard zipline kit arrives as a coil of steel cable, a turnbuckle or ratchet strap to pull it tight, a plastic seat, a waist belt or harness, a trolley that rolls along the line, and a spring brake meant to slow the rider before the far anchor. Strung between two trees, it turns an…
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Lidl will refund shortbread cookies with no receipt after boxes shipped without English allergen labels
The box looks unremarkable: an 11.6-ounce carton of Eridanous shortbread cookies, coated in chocolate truffle and filled with apricot, sold at Lidl. Turn it over and the problem is immediately visible to anyone who knows to look. The ingredients and nutrition panel is printed in a foreign language. There is no English ingredient list, no…
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Medicare will flag its top-rated nursing homes on Care Compare in September and give them lighter inspections
A family choosing a nursing home rarely gets much time to do it. A hospital discharge planner hands over a list, a parent needs a bed within days, and a set of star ratings on a federal website ends up carrying most of the weight in a decision that will shape both a person’s care…
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Medicare set the 2027 Part D base premium at $41.33 and will end a subsidy for standalone drug plans
On July 28, Medicare published one number that no beneficiary will ever see on a bill: $41.33. That is the base beneficiary premium for Part D drug coverage in 2027, and it is not a price. It is the statutory floor that every basic drug-plan premium is calculated from, and the figure the late-enrollment penalty…
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Report a lost debit card within two business days and you owe at most $50, but unreported charges after 60 days carry unlimited liability
The clock that decides what a stolen debit card ends up costing does not start when the card goes missing. It starts at the moment the cardholder realizes it is gone. Federal law allows two business days from that realization, and the distance between beating that deadline and missing it is the distance between a…
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Four U.S. banks have failed in 2026, two of them in one July week
The notice a bank failure generates in the Federal Register is addressed to creditors and lawyers, not to the people who kept a checking account there. That division is the design. At every American bank placed in federal receivership this year, the cost of the failure was routed to the federal Deposit Insurance Fund rather…
