Workers who log long hours have a tax break coming, and starting with 2026 the amount will be printed right on the W-2. Eligible workers can deduct up to $12,500 of qualified overtime, or up to $25,000 for married couples filing jointly, when they file their federal return. It is real money for people who…

A tax rule that most households have never heard of can take nearly a quarter of a payment before it ever reaches a bank account. It is called backup withholding, and it kicks in when the government cannot match a payment to a correct taxpayer identification number. The mechanism itself is decades old, but a…

For the millions of people who sell a few things online or get paid through an app, the threshold that triggers a tax form landing in the mailbox just moved back up — a lot. Under the tax law enacted in 2025, payment platforms only have to send you a Form 1099-K when your payments…

The amount a person can pass to heirs free of federal estate and gift tax has jumped to $15 million, and — unlike the last big increase — it is now written into law without an expiration date. For a married couple, careful planning can shield up to $30 million. The change took effect January…

Every U.S. citizen baby born over a four-year stretch is now in line for a $1,000 head start on saving, courtesy of the federal government. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act created a new kind of tax-advantaged investment account for children, nicknamed a “Trump account,” and seeded it with a one-time federal deposit. For families…

Homeowners in high-tax states have spent years bumping up against a $10,000 ceiling on what they could deduct for state and local taxes. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act lifted that ceiling to $40,000 beginning in tax year 2025, a fourfold increase that reshapes the math for a specific slice of taxpayers. The change is…

The $2,000 “tariff dividend” check that President Trump has floated remains just a proposal, and the Senate bill that would create a version of it has stalled. No checks have gone out, no agency is sending money, and there is no application to file, because the payment does not exist. For households that have seen…

A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of International Trade spent thirty pages on a single question this month: whether a president who cannot impose tariffs under emergency powers can nonetheless switch off the rule that let packages worth $800 or less enter the country duty free. On August 13, 2026, the panel answered yes…

A pair of temporary clauses stopped applying on the last day of 2025, and Congress has not written anything to take their place. The live text of the statute still carries both of them, still labeled as running only through 2025, with no later amendment attached. What replaced them is the original 2010 subsidy structure,…

Interest on an unpaid federal tax balance is not a fixed annual charge that sits still. The Internal Revenue Code re-derives it every three months from a market benchmark, and whatever comes out of that formula then compounds daily against the balance until the balance is gone. For the quarter that begins Oct. 1, the…