The tariff rate on the average imported product is lower right now than it has been in months, and almost nobody has noticed, because it dropped as the result of a Supreme Court ruling rather than a tariff cut anyone announced with fanfare. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the country’s effective tariff rate at…

A quiet back-office deadline is about to affect anyone who has ever issued a 1099 to a contractor, tenant, or freelancer. The IRS is retiring the decades-old FIRE system that has processed most electronically filed information returns, and after November 19 it will no longer accept new filings through that platform at all. The replacement,…

Anyone shopping for a drone this fall is about to run into a price jump that has nothing to do with the manufacturer’s list price. Starting September 3, a new federal tariff adds 100 percent to the cost of importing larger drones and any drone equipped with thermal imaging, on top of whatever the retailer…

Shoppers picking up a bottle of Canadian rye or a block of imported cheddar this week are paying more than they were a month ago, and it happened because a three-day negotiating window quietly ran out. A 50 percent duty on Canadian alcoholic beverages, dairy products and motor vehicles took effect at 12:01 a.m. Eastern…

A tariff schedule that took effect five weeks ago is now the standing rule for how much extra Americans pay at the register on goods from 60 of the country’s trading partners, and it is not going away anytime soon. The Trump administration’s July 23 memorandum sets a two-tier system: a 10 percent tariff for…

The IRS has quietly reset one of the most consequential numbers in the Affordable Care Act, and most workers will never see it printed on a pay stub or a benefits enrollment packet. Starting with health plans that begin in 2027, an employer can require a worker to spend up to 10.22 percent of household…

Proving to a landlord, lender, or employer that you’re current on your taxes has usually meant handing over a tax transcript or a copy of a return and hoping the person on the other end knows how to read it. The IRS has now built a purpose-made document for exactly that situation, one that carries…

An employer that wants to help a worker save for a child’s future could soon have a straightforward, tax-free way to do it — at least on paper. The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service floated proposed regulations on Aug. 11, 2026, spelling out how a company could contribute up to $2,500 a year…

Overtime pay is not getting any bigger on payday under the federal tax law that created a new deduction for it. The Internal Revenue Service made that explicit on August 6, 2026, when it published a substantially rewritten set of frequently asked questions on the deduction for qualified overtime compensation, replacing guidance the agency had…

A rumor keeps circulating that Americans are about to receive a $2,000 tariff-dividend check, and the reality is worth stating plainly: no such payment has been approved. The idea remains a proposal, not a law, and the IRS has warned that scammers are already using the buzz to trick people. This is a story about…