Category: Taxes Made Simple
-
New Jersey seniors have to file the PAS-1 by November 2 to get ANCHOR, Senior Freeze, or Stay NJ money
New Jersey combined three major property-tax relief programs into one senior application, but the simpler form still has a hard deadline. Eligible older homeowners must submit the 2025 PAS-1 by November 2 to claim ANCHOR, Senior Freeze or Stay NJ benefits. Filing once lets the state determine which programs fit. One application does three separate…
-
$226 million in Pennsylvania property tax and rent rebates is going out, with applications open until December 31
Pennsylvania has already started distributing $226.4 million in property-tax and rent rebates, but eligible people who have not filed still have until December 31. The program does not renew itself from last year’s application. Every household must qualify again using 2025 income and housing costs. The first wave covers nearly 376,000 applications Payments began July…
-
Connecticut renters 65 and older have until September 30 to claim up to $900
Connecticut’s Office of Policy and Management uses a sentence on its renters’ rebate page that most benefit programs go out of their way to avoid: “There are no extensions permitted.” That is not a note about processing times or a caution about missing paperwork. It is the state saying that when the filing window shuts,…
-
Utah homeowners 67 and older can claim up to $1,412 by September 1
Most property tax breaks pay the same amount to everyone who qualifies. Utah’s circuit breaker does not. The benefit is read off a bracket table, so the credit a household receives is decided entirely by where last year’s income landed, and the distance between the top bracket and the bottom one is the distance between…
-
If your employer leaves overtime out of one W-2 box, you cannot claim the $12,500 deduction
A worker who logged overtime in 2025 could reconstruct the number without any help from the payroll department. Pay stubs, a calendar and a little arithmetic were enough, and the figure went on the tax return whether or not it showed up anywhere on the W-2. That option is gone for 2026. The number now…
-
Maryland renters 60 and older can claim up to $1,000 by October 1
Maryland renters who are 60 or older, and renters of any age who are 100% disabled, can apply this year for a state payment worth as much as $1,000. It is not a discount buried in a tax bill: the Renters’ Tax Credit arrives as a direct check from the State of Maryland. The catch…
-
A new IRS process erases some late penalties automatically after three clean years
For as long as most taxpayers can remember, getting the IRS to forgive a late-filing or late-payment penalty meant asking for it: a phone call, a written statement, or a formal abatement request, followed by waiting to hear back. Starting this summer, for people and businesses with a clean recent record, that entire ritual disappears.…
-
The dependent care FSA limit rises from $5,000 to $7,500 in 2026
Sometime this fall, a benefits portal will ask working families a deceptively small question: how much of next year’s pay should be set aside, before taxes, for the care that makes working possible? For years the ceiling on that answer barely moved; for 2026, it jumped by half. The account is the dependent care flexible…
-
63 storm-hit counties now have until November 2, and some victims can tap retirement savings penalty-free
Sixty-three counties across three states are running on a different federal tax calendar than the rest of the country this year. After severe storms, tornadoes, and flooding swept through parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Mississippi this spring, the IRS announced on July 13 that a long list of federal filing and payment deadlines in those…
-
About four million tax filers got IRS notices over missing or incorrect direct-deposit details
A change meant to move federal refunds away from paper checks created a new layer of tax-season friction. By April 27, the IRS had sent about four million notices for returns with missing or incorrect direct-deposit information, according to the National Taxpayer Advocate’s 2026 mid-year report. Some filers then faced confusing online waiver steps and…
