Main Street Dollars

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President Donald Trump told a Republican convention crowd in Dallas that he would issue a $5,000 payment to every adult American citizen if the GOP keeps control of the House and Senate after November’s midterm elections. He gave no timeline, no funding mechanism and no agency to administer it. Analysts who ran the math on…

The new car loan interest deduction only covers vehicles assembled in the United States, and the VIN goes on the form

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in Credits & Deductions

A new tax break lets car buyers deduct up to $10,000 a year in loan interest, but the Treasury Department’s final rules make one thing unmistakable: the write-off is not open to every vehicle on a dealer’s lot. Anyone who financed a truck, SUV or sedan built outside the United States will find the deduction…

A rejected direct deposit gives a taxpayer 30 days to fix it before the IRS mails a paper check

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in Refunds

When a taxpayer’s refund can’t reach a bank account because the routing or account number is wrong, missing, or rejected outright, the IRS no longer simply defaults to mailing a check. It sends a notice called CP53E, starts a 30-day clock, and asks the taxpayer to fix the direct deposit online before that window closes.…

Anyone who extended a 2025 return owes it October 15, and the free filing software is still open

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in Free Tax Help

Millions of taxpayers who asked the IRS for more time this spring are now closer to the real deadline than the extension ever suggested. October 15 is the date Form 4868 actually buys, and for households still sitting on an unfinished return, the IRS Free File program remains open to help finish it without paying…

The IRS is replacing First Time Abate with automatic penalty relief, and the switch is final January 1

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The Internal Revenue Service has begun retiring one of its oldest penalty-relief tools, First Time Abate, in favor of a new automatic process that does not require anyone to call or write in. The change affects any household or small business that occasionally files or pays a return late but otherwise has a clean compliance…

Federal law shields $11,980 of household goods and $5,300 of wages from an IRS levy this year

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When someone falls behind on federal taxes and the IRS moves to collect through a wage garnishment or the seizure of belongings, the collection is not unlimited. A set of dollar figures built into the tax code marks off exactly how much of a paycheck, and which possessions, the government has to leave alone. Those…

The IRS now freezes a refund when a return arrives without bank details, and it sends that warning only once

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in Refunds

A tax refund that stalls in IRS processing used to have one dependable backstop: if the bank account on file didn’t work, a paper check eventually showed up anyway, no extra steps required. That backstop is gone for the 2026 filing season. Any Form 1040 return that reaches the IRS without valid direct deposit information…

The average effective U.S. tariff rate stood at 6.7% in July, up from 2.3% when the tariffs began

Sep 17, 2026

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Customs officers processed roughly the same volume of imports in July 2026 as they did a year earlier, but the toll collected on every dollar of goods crossing the border looked nothing like it did when the current wave of tariffs began. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the average effective tariff rate —…

A House bill would refund $231 billion in tariff costs to filers earning $400,000 or less, and has sat in committee since March

Sep 17, 2026

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Six months ago, a single-page referral sent a tariff-rebate bill to the House Committee on Ways and Means, and the committee has not touched it since. H.R. 7865, the American Consumer Tariff Rebate Act of 2026, would draw on a $231.35 billion pool tied to estimated consumer tariff costs and send one-time refund payments to…

Identity theft victims wait about 20 months for the IRS to clear their case, its taxpayer advocate reported in June

Sep 17, 2026

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