The federal income tax on Social Security benefits has not been repealed, reduced, or scheduled for a vote. Three separate bills in the current Congress would end it outright, and all three are sitting exactly where they were filed, in the committees that received them, with no recorded action since 2025. What did become law…

For the 2025 tax year, the most a worker could run through an employer’s dependent care account and keep out of taxable income was $5,000. For tax years beginning after December 31, 2025, that ceiling is $7,500. The difference is $2,500 of child care spending that moves from after-tax dollars to pre-tax dollars, and it…

Box 12 of the Form W-2 carries a code this year that was not on the wage statement workers opened last January. Employers must now enter qualified overtime compensation there under the two-letter code TT, and that single entry is what makes the new overtime deduction usable at all. The Internal Revenue Service set out…

A tax break that most eligible workers never claimed is being converted into something harder to miss: cash deposited straight into a retirement account. Treasury and the IRS have begun writing the rules for the Saver’s Match, a federal contribution worth as much as $1,000 a year to low- and moderate-income savers. It applies to…

Older taxpayers have a new break this year, and it is one of the simpler ones to use. Anyone 65 and older gets an extra $6,000 deduction — $12,000 for a married couple where both spouses qualify — on top of the standard deduction. It lowers taxable income whether or not you itemize, and for…

Car-loan interest has been a dead end at tax time for decades — a real cost with no deduction behind it. That changes for recent buyers of certain new vehicles. A new tax break lets you write off up to $10,000 a year in interest on a loan for a qualifying vehicle, and unlike most…

Two of the most talked-about tax changes of the past year are now real, filed on a new form, and aimed squarely at people who work for tips or clock overtime. Eligible workers can deduct up to $25,000 in qualified tips and up to $12,500 in overtime pay from their taxable income. The catch is…

If you work overtime, part of that extra pay can now come off your taxable income. Under the same law that created the tip deduction, workers can deduct qualified overtime pay on their 2026 federal return, up to $12,500 for a single filer or $25,000 for a married couple filing jointly. It is a real…

For servers, bartenders, hairstylists, and drivers, tips have always been fully taxable income, right down to the last dollar reported. A new federal deduction changes the math. Under the law commonly called the One Big Beautiful Bill, workers in tipped jobs can deduct up to $25,000 of qualified tips on their 2026 federal return, which…

There is a tax break for retirement savers that pays you for money you were setting aside anyway, and a lot of the people who qualify never claim it. It is called the Saver’s Credit, and it is worth up to $1,000 for a single filer or $2,000 for a married couple. Unlike a deduction,…