Four states now share the same tax deadline for reasons that have nothing to do with each other. Storms in Indiana, a wildfire in Nebraska, flooding in West Virginia and a tropical storm in Mississippi each triggered a separate IRS disaster declaration this summer, and every one of them lands on the identical date: February…

Roughly 19 million taxpayers asked the IRS for extra time to file their 2025 return this year, and that borrowed time runs out on October 15. For most of them the stakes are more than a scolding letter — a return that arrives more than 60 days after that date now triggers a minimum penalty…

Not getting a tax form in the mail does not erase the tax bill it would have documented. That is the single biggest misunderstanding hanging over Form 1099-K this filing season, especially now that the federal reporting bar sits at $20,000 and 200 transactions instead of the lower figure Congress once planned. A gig driver,…

A part-time seller in Worcester, Massachusetts, who moved roughly $2,200 in used furniture and freelance design work through payment apps this year will still get a Form 1099-K in January. That comes as a surprise to a lot of people, because Congress just pushed the federal reporting bar for those forms back up to $20,000.…

The IRS confirmed this week that the interest it charges on unpaid federal taxes, and pays on refunds it’s slow to issue, will not change when the next quarter begins on October 1. For anyone carrying a tax balance into the fall, or still waiting on a refund that’s taking longer than expected, that means…

Small businesses that run their own payroll are getting their own version of the IRS’s new automatic penalty relief, and the bar for qualifying is measured in quarters, not years. Employers that have deposited payroll taxes and filed on time for twelve consecutive quarters, three straight years on a quarterly clock, will have failure-to-deposit penalties…

The IRS is retiring one of its best-known taxpayer favors. First Time Abate, the penalty waiver that has let millions of otherwise compliant filers erase a single late-filing or late-payment penalty just by asking, is being phased out in favor of a process that requires no request at all. The change affects anyone who has…

Married couples can generally give each other unlimited amounts of money or property without triggering federal gift tax, thanks to what’s called the unlimited marital deduction. That rule doesn’t apply, though, when one spouse isn’t a U.S. citizen. Instead, the IRS caps how much a citizen or resident spouse can give a noncitizen spouse tax-free…

The IRS has finalized the income tax brackets that will apply to money earned in 2026, and the headline number is where the top rate kicks in. A single filer’s income above $640,600, and a married couple’s income above $768,700, is taxed at 37 percent — the highest of the seven marginal rates in the…

Two companies importing the same category of medicine can end up owing wildly different amounts at the border, and the difference isn’t luck. A pharmaceutical tariff signed in April carved out two separate escape routes from its steepest rate, and drug manufacturers have spent the months since deciding which one, if either, to take. One…