When making retirement plans, be sure to include how taxes might affect your ability to spend your golden years the way you want. Taxation of Social Security is getting a closer look this year, mainly because the Republican presidential nominee has suggested ending the current federal tax paid by some retirees on up to 85 percent of their benefits. A handful of states also tax the federal retirement benefits that their residents receive. This is the case in Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and West Virginia. Those nine Social Security taxing states are this weekend’s... Read more →
Tax numbers
UPDATE, Sept. 5, 2025: Has your state joined Direct File? Check out this special Direct File 2025 Participating States page. State participation in the Internal Revenue Service’s Direct File slowly keeps growing. Connecticut and North Carolina are the latest states that will allow some of their taxpayers to use the IRS’ direct tax preparation and e-filing online program next year. They join New Mexico, New Jersey, Oregon, and Pennsylvania as new participants during the 2025 tax filing season. Twelve states — Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. — were part... Read more →
The Department of Justice, per a Drug Enforcement Administration request, is moving to transfer of marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to Schedule III. That decision aligns with the stance of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, and is supported by the Biden Administration. The change would not make cannabis legal nationally. It still will be a controlled substance under federal law. But the recategorization would provide state-legal cannabis businesses some banking access, and the ability to claim some tax breaks they currently are denied. Less of a stigma: Going from Schedule I to Schedule... Read more →
UPDATE, Sept. 5, 2025: Has your state joined Direct File? Check out this special Direct File 2025 Participating States page. Two more states, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, joined Direct File last week. Direct File is the Internal Revenue Service created no-cost online tax preparation program. Eligible taxpayers can use it prepare and then e-file their annual tax returns for free. It is similar to Free File, the IRS partnership with some in the tax software industry, but Direct File cuts out the private sector and allows taxpayers to take care of filing directly with Uncle Sam. When Direct File launched... Read more →
The Senate recessed last week after failing to pass a bipartisan tax bill that the House approved back in January. On Jan. 31, after more than a year of negotiations, the House overwhelmingly approved a tax bill that included some popular business tax breaks and Child Tax Credit (CTC) enhancements. The House's 357-to-70 support of the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act, plus its bipartisan origin — it was a compromise worked out by Democratic Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republican House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith of Missouri — seemed to indicate... Read more →
UPDATE, Sept. 5, 2025: Has your state joined Direct File? Check out this special Direct File 2025 Participating States page. GOP members of congress and the Internal Revenue Service are on a collision course when it comes to the agency’s Direct File program. Republican Reps. Adrian Smith of Nebraska and Chuck Edwards of North Carolina last week introduced legislation to block the IRS from continuing its Direct File program. Meanwhile, the Treasury Department also announced last week that another state has joined the Direct File program for the coming 2025 filing season. New Jersey is the latest jurisdiction to allow... Read more →
Photo by Pixabay It’s true that correlation does not imply causation, but some Kentucky data seems to indicate that the Bluegrass State’s decision in 2018 to increase its cigarette tax rate not only boosted the state’s revenue, but also lowered smoking rates. It is also true that Kentucky's initial large tax revenue collection has steadily declined since the latest tax rate hike was implemented. But Kentucky Health News (KHN) reports that the last revenue count from the state’s department of revenue, $270.5 million as of June 30, is still well above the $211.8 million that was collected before the tobacco... Read more →
For most U.S. families, summer vacation involves a road trip. Taking to the country’s highways is a chance to enjoy new landscapes, listen to (and sing along with) favorite playlists, and share time with the family. Road trips also mean stops for fuel, both for auto occupants and the vehicle. The good news for summer 2024 drivers is that the cost of gasoline isn’t that bad. AAA data show that the average price of gas as of mid-July is just more than $3.50 a gallon. That’s the same as the average price per gallon in 2023. Motorists in seven states,... Read more →
That will leave a dozen states still taxing at least some food bought by grocery shoppers. My favorite section of my local H-E-B grocery. (Photo by Kay Bell) When you loaded up your grocery cart for your July 4th spread, you probably weren’t thinking about taxes. That’s because most of us live in states that, for the most part, don’t tax food. That’s not the case in 13 states. Those jurisdictions do tack a few percentage points of sales tax on most foodstuffs. But one of those states will join the no-grocery-tax ranks later this summer. In late August, Oklahoma’s... Read more →
Photo by cottonbro studio The Internal Revenue Service's whistleblower program helped the agency collect $338 million in fiscal year 2023. The IRS Whistleblower Office also noted in its 2023 report, issued on June 24, that it paid whistleblowers 121 awards, totaling $88.8 million, for the revenue-increasing information. That awards total was more than double the $37.8 million the office paid in fiscal 2022. But the total number of whistleblower awards for FY23 dropped, going from 132 in 2022 to 121 the following fiscal year. And to keep the Whistleblower Office on pace to help with tax compliance, the latest report... Read more →
An aerial view of planes at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. (Photo by Miguel Ángel Sanz on Unsplash) It will be a while before we get a final accounting of the COVID-19 pandemic costs, but last week we some good and bad tax-related figures connected to the health crisis. On the negative side of the ledger, there are the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) claims. This program that helped businesses keep workers on payroll in 2020 and 2021, but a rash of post-pandemic claims has cost the U.S. Treasury, at last count, $230 billion. There is, however,... Read more →
Unsplash+ in collaboration with Getty Images Tax credits are better than deductions because credits provide a dollar-for-dollar reduction of tax you owe. But sometimes, getting a credit’s benefit in a real-life cash-flow situation is better than the financial results at tax filing time. That’s the case, for example, in making a major consumer purchase, like a car. And that’s why the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service last year issued guidance on the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act clean vehicle provisions to help buyers of qualifying energy-efficient autos get immediate use of the credit. Under the rules, eligible vehicle buyers... Read more →
There’s good news for the Internal Revenue Service’s efforts to get rid of as much paper as possible. The agency’s Document Upload Tool, or DUT, recently received its 1 millionth taxpayer submission. The online option lets taxpayers and tax professionals respond digitally to a wide range of tax issues. One of those issues is potentially underreported income, which prompts the IRS to issue Notice CP2000. With the DUT, taxpayers or their preparers can easily scan the material that answers the notice’s questions and electronically submit it to the agency, said the IRS. DUT growth: The upload tool was launched in... Read more →
The 2024 hurricane season has just begun, but some people are still dealing with disasters from last and earlier this year. Some of them now are facing a June 17 tax filing and payment deadline. Mother Nature has been Mommy Dearest across much of the United States so far this year. Way too many federal announcements and media reports have included the phrase “A historic severe weather outbreak occurred” in 2024, meaning that millions of Americans have found themselves in major disaster areas. And the current hurricane season has just begun! Unfortunately, the disastrous start to this year was a... Read more →
UPDATE, Sept. 5, 2025: Has your state joined Direct File? Check out this special Direct File 2025 Participating States page. It seems the Internal Revenue Service, or at least its Direct File program, has a new public relations agency. It’s a group of Capitol Hill Democrats and Independents. The U.S. Senators and Representatives signed a May 15 letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel lauding the IRS free online tax preparation and e-filing option. The Direct File pilot program, created and run by the IRS, was rolled out this filing season in 12 states. When it... Read more →
Some of the March 14 tornado damage in Indian Lake, Logan County, Ohio. (Photo credit: Indian Lake Chamber via Facebook) During the evening of March 14, supercell thunderstorms dropped numerous strong tornadoes across western and central Ohio. By the time things cleared, the deadly twisters also had left trails of destruction across the Buckeye State. The National Weather Service (NWS) confirmed three EF1 twisters, two reaching EF2, and an EF3 across Ohio. The NWS office in Wilmington, just north of Cincinnati, reported a total of 145 miles of combined tornado tracks across the state. Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) investigation... Read more →
Happy Mother’s Day! I hope all the moms out there got everything they wanted today. Of course, we should be grateful for all that our parents do for us every day of the year. In additional to the emotional support, moms (and dads) literally pay for parenthood. A recent calculation of the average cost to raise a child to age 18 came to $312,202. That figure is for a middle-class family, and doesn’t include college expenses. Yikes! Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow emeritus in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, told WTOP News that the true price could be... Read more →
UPDATE, May 28, 2025: The Internal Revenue Service recommended, and the U.S. Treasury agreed, that the free tax software program created and operated directly by the IRS will be a permanent tax preparation and electronic filing option. Federal tax officials are encouraging all 50 states and Washington, D.C., to join the expanded Direct File program in filing season 2025. UPDATE, Sept. 5, 2025: Has your state joined Direct File? Check out this special Direct File 2025 Participating States page. Among the nearly 141.4 million tax returns that the Internal Revenue Service had received by the week ending April 26, were... Read more →
UPDATE, June 28, 2024: Today, the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department issued final regulations and other guidance related to reporting digital assets. Beginning with the 2025 calendar year, brokers may be required to report certain information regarding digital asset transactions as outlined in the new regulations set forth by the IRS. This includes filing information returns, providing statements to payees, and withholding on certain digital asset transactions. You can find more in the IRS announcement, and this Marcum analysis. Just days after tax season 2024 wrapped on April 16 for most filers, the Internal Revenue Service already alerted some... Read more →
Earth Day 2024 is tomorrow, April 22. But today is so nice — we finally got some rain, and the butterflies and hummingbirds are taking over our backyard — that I decided to celebrate a day early. This special day dedicated to the ecological issues facing our planet was first held on April 22, 1970. Back then, San Francisco activist John McConnell and Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson came up with the idea separately. But they agreed that Americans should join en masse in grassroots demonstrations to highlight environmental threats. McConnell wanted Earth Day events to happen on March 20, which... Read more →