Author: Elizabeth Blessing
-
Amazon’s Prime refunds now reach people who used between 11 and 20 Prime benefits in a year, with payments starting October 1
“The revised order will ensure more consumers who were harmed by Amazon’s deceptive enrollment and cancellation practices benefit from the FTC’s historic settlement,” said Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, when the agency announced the change on September 17, 2026. Under the revised order, Amazon began issuing automatic payments on October…
-
The Federal Trade Commission is sending Zelle payments to people who never cashed refund checks from AT&T, Ring, Amazon Flex and the University of Phoenix
Refund checks that sat uncashed for months are getting a second delivery route. On its refund pages, the Federal Trade Commission says it is now sending Zelle payments to people who did not cash a check or accept a PayPal payment in four separate cases: AT&T, Ring, Amazon Flex and the University of Phoenix. The…
-
November 2026 carries no regular Supplemental Security Income payment at all, because the November benefit goes out on October 30 when November 1 falls on a Sunday
The Social Security Administration’s regulation on Supplemental Security Income timing leaves no room for a November 1 deposit next month. November 1, 2026 is a Sunday, so the benefit for November is scheduled to go out on Friday, October 30. Households that run on SSI will see the money land two days before the month…
-
Federal prosecutors in Illinois charge a woman over $21,402 in alleged benefit losses, saying her mother’s body sat in a garage freezer for two years
The indictment, as the Justice Department describes it, starts with a deep freezer in a garage. Federal prosecutors in the Northern District of Illinois allege that Eva Bratcher concealed her mother’s body there for two years, taking on her mother’s identity and collecting her mother’s Social Security payments and SNAP benefits in the meantime. The…
-
A parent claims a child’s Trump Account through an official app
A parent or guardian claims a child’s Trump Account in the Trump Accounts app, a mobile application the U.S. Department of the Treasury released on May 28, 2026. Treasury has already opened accounts automatically for most eligible children, so the step left to families is a claim: verifying who they are, answering a few questions…
-
Prosecutors charged 17 people over more than $1.3 million in allegedly stolen Social Security benefits
Seventeen defendants, eleven federal districts and $1,326,330 in alleged intended loss to Social Security sit in one Justice Department tally released September 29. Prosecutors charged all 17 people between August 21 and September 18, 2026, and the department presented the group as a one-month takedown run with the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector…
-
The FTC says Lens.com hid a fees line that routinely doubled the advertised lens price
The Federal Trade Commission says Lens.com, the online contact lens seller, advertised low prices and then added a mandatory “Taxes & fees” charge that it kept below the visible part of the checkout screen, so that its hidden fees routinely doubled the advertised price. The agency filed suit on October 2, 2026 alongside the attorneys…
-
Indiana’s disaster relief reaches 21 counties and the IRS applies it automatically by address
Marion County, which holds Indianapolis, is one of 21 Indiana counties where the Internal Revenue Service has pushed federal tax deadlines to February 1, 2027 after severe storms, straight-line winds, tornadoes and flooding that began August 11. Taxpayers in those counties do not file a form, send a letter or make a call to get…
-
A married couple would claim the proposed scholarship credit’s $3,400 maximum only if each spouse contributed
The largest scholarship credit a married couple could take on one joint return is $3,400, and the proposed rules attach a condition to it: each spouse has to have made qualified contributions of up to $1,700. The figure is double the $1,700 ceiling for an individual, but the proposal does not treat a joint return…
-
Treasury set a December 15 hearing on the proposed rules for the new scholarship tax credit
The IRS has scheduled a public hearing for Tuesday, December 15, 2026, at 10 a.m. Eastern Time, to take testimony on proposed regulations for the new federal tax credit for contributions to scholarship granting organizations. The hearing is attached to a notice of proposed rulemaking with a longer comment calendar behind it, and one condition…