Category: Taxes Made Simple
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A tax-refund fraud sentence includes $410,117.44 in restitution to the IRS
Three false trust returns sought more than $1.1 million from the IRS, but one issued refund ultimately produced a restitution order of $410,117.44. A Maryland woman has been sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison after pleading guilty to theft of government funds. The case shows how a claimed refund amount, an…
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Bank statements and old photos can help prove a disaster loss when receipts are gone
A flood, wildfire or tornado can destroy the receipts needed to document the property it destroyed. The IRS says a missing paper trail does not end the process: bank and card statements, photographs, videos, contractor records and county files can rebuild it. The same evidence may matter for a tax return, federal assistance application or…
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Self-employed filers who expect to owe $1,000 face a September 15 tax deadline
September 15 is the third estimated-tax deadline for the 2026 tax year, and self-employed people are among the filers most likely to need it. The familiar $1,000 figure is only the first part of the test. A filer generally must also expect withholding and refundable credits to fall below the applicable current-year or prior-year safe-harbor…
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A car loan only cuts taxes if the vehicle was assembled in the United States
A car loan can now shrink a tax bill, but only if the vehicle underneath it rolled off a factory line inside the United States. The “no tax on car loan interest” provision, part of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill, lets eligible buyers deduct up to $10,000 a year in loan interest on a personal-use…
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The tip deduction excludes anyone whose job was not on an IRS list by December 2024
A server, bartender or valet can now deduct a good chunk of tips from federal taxable income, but the tax break only reaches workers in jobs the IRS has formally recognized as tip-based. The rule, part of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill’s “No Tax on Tips” provision, runs through 2028 and lets eligible workers deduct…
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Three tribal nations face a tax deadline of September 28, two weeks before everyone else
Members of three tribal nations across Montana and Arizona have until September 28 to file federal tax returns postponed by separate storms, two and a half weeks ahead of the October 15 deadline everyone else on extension is working toward. The IRS issued the relief in three separate notices covering the Crow Reservation, the Fort…
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Twenty-one Indiana counties, including Indianapolis, now have until February 1, 2027, to file
Households and small businesses across 21 Indiana counties, including Marion County, home to Indianapolis, now have until February 1, 2027, to file a range of federal tax returns after storms that began August 11 triggered a federal disaster declaration. The relief, issued by the IRS as Notice IN-2026-01, follows a FEMA declaration covering severe storms,…
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Treasury told Congress the IRS will suspend Direct File, which cost $138 a return
The Direct File pilot let taxpayers prepare and submit a federal return straight to the IRS at no cost, without a commercial software company in the loop. It is being shut down. In a report delivered to Congress this fall, the Treasury Department stated that the IRS will suspend Direct File, pointing to the program’s…
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About 98 million households qualified to file their taxes free, and 2.7 million did
Filing a federal tax return does not have to cost a household anything, yet most people who qualified for the free option skipped it last year. The Treasury Department’s own count, delivered to Congress this fall in a report on the future of free filing, put the number of households eligible for the IRS Free…
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Audits of people earning over $400,000 fell 27 percent while nonfiler notices nearly doubled
Two numbers moved in opposite directions inside the IRS this year, and both point in the same direction for taxpayers: enforcement is shifting away from face-to-face audits of high earners and toward mass-mailed notices. Examinations of people with more than $400,000 in income fell 27 percent from fiscal 2024 to fiscal 2025, even as the…