Biden’s budget wants tax hikes, but expiring Trump tax cuts are the big showdown

For five years, most Americans have seen lower income-tax rates and tapped a bigger standard deduction, but without congressional action before the end of 2025, the rules could still revert to levels ...

Opinion: Powell will have to push rates even higher for the Fed to get inflation to 2%

Inflation is proving tougher to curb than Federal Reserve Chairman Powell anticipated, and despite indicators that a recession could be coming, consumers and businesses apparently haven’t gotten the m...

Capital Gains and Dividend Tax Rates for 2022-2023

Investors who have taxable accounts—as opposed to tax-favored retirement accounts such as individual retirement accounts (IRAs) or 401(k)s—are often eligible for lower tax rates on investment income a...

Moving in Retirement to Cut Tax Costs? Consider These 4 Factors First.

When an affluent suburban Chicago couple came to John Campbell, senior wealth strategist at U.S. Bank Private Wealth Management, planning to retire in New Mexico because of its weather and lower incom...

Opinion: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren’s bold tax hike to shore up Social Security

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders want to shore up Social Security by raising the top rate of income tax by a third, and the top rate of capital-gains tax by more than a half. The Democratic senator...

A Debt-Ceiling Fight Could Raise U.S. Borrowing Costs and Worsen Budget Deficits

Illustration by Chris Cash Text size About the authors: Arvind Krishnamurthy is the John S. Osterweis professor of finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Hanno Lustig is the school’s Miz...

7 tax tips for seniors to make the most of your deductions

Tax filing season just opened for 2022 returns, and the IRS is already warning that average refunds may be lower since most pandemic economic relief measures are finished. That means careful tax plann...

‘I am trying to feverishly save for retirement’: My fiancé pays $1,700 a month to the IRS and owes student debt. We’re both 57. Should I marry him for his Social Security and pension?

Dear Quentin, My fiancé and I met at age 42 after being recently divorced. We have (now-grown) children from our previous marriages, but none together. We keep our finances separate. Neither one of us...

The IRS Has New Tax Rules for State Payments. What They Could Mean for You.

The Internal Revenue Service on Friday gave the green light to taxpayers in 21 states who had been waiting for the agency to clarify the taxability of certain state payments before filing their federa...

IRS says people in most states who got inflation-relief payments don’t have to report it on their taxes. Here’s where.

The IRS is not going to tax payments from most of the states that cut checks to residents last year in order to help them defray rising living costs. This week, the IRS has been trying to determine if...

Biden targets stock buybacks — do they help you as an investor?

There seem to be two camps when it comes to stock buybacks. On one hand, share buybacks can reduce a company’s share count, which increases profit per share and hopefully supports a rising stock price...

Property Taxes Are Going Up; Here’s How to Lower Your Bill

Listen to article (1 minute) The cost of homeownership will rise for millions of Americans in coming weeks as new property-tax assessments arrive in the mail.  Property taxes have risen across much of...

Dear Tax Guy: I just started renting my house out on Airbnb. What income-tax deductions can I claim on this property?

I just started renting my house out on Airbnb. I started a limited liability company to keep the expenses separate from personal ones. I am trying to figure out what would be considered tax deductions...

White families are reaping over 90% of the benefit from this powerful tax rule

Tax season is starting for all Americans — but the tax code’s provisions play out very differently for white families compared to families of color, new research says. The tax benefits from some of th...

The Window to Capture a $7,500 Electric-Vehicle Tax Credit May Be Closing. How to Snag It.

Americans are flocking to electric vehicles, pushing sales up 127% over the past two years. To sweeten the deal, the federal government is offering a tax credit of up to $7,500 for EVs and other “clea...

IRS says ‘Tax Day’ will be different this year — put these important tax dates on your calendar

It’s not too early to start thinking about your 2022 income-tax return, if you can bear the thought. That’s because the tax-filing season is scheduled to start on Monday, Jan. 23, the Internal Revenue...

‘Our kids say our small house is embarrassing’: My husband and I earn $160K, have $1 million in retirement savings, cook at home and drive an old Honda. Are we missing out? 

I’m a pretty fortunate person who lives a pretty fortunate life, and our annual household income at $160,000 is high compared to the rest of the world. However, we are still pretty frugal — we cook at...

IRS wraps up paying people this lucrative pandemic-era tax break. Here’s how much money they can expect — and why they’re getting it.

Nearly two years after lawmakers temporarily changed tax rules in the middle of the filing season in order to exclude a major chunk of jobless benefits from federal income tax, the Internal Revenue Se...

Berkshire Hathaway Could Face Big Tax Hit if Bull Market Resumes

Berkshire Hathaway could face a sizable tax bill if the bull market resumes this year. Ever since a 15% corporate minimum tax was included in the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, there has been uncert...

Opinion: Opinion: Trump’s low tax payments are what happens with a too-complex tax code

People tend to have one of two reactions to the revelation that former President Donald Trump paid little to no taxes in recent years: He’s either an amoral tax cheat or he’s smart. To me, it reveals ...

Democrats release six years of Trump’s tax returns, and CPAs have questions: ‘The personal tax return is just the tip of the iceberg.’

The nonpartisan committee’s findings also raised several red flags related to the filings, namely Trump’s carryover losses, loans to his children that may or may not also be considered taxable gifts, ...

Donald Trump paid $0 in taxes in 2020. He’s not alone: 60% of households paid no federal income tax that year, but for very different reasons.

It’s not that unusual. Former President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, paid $0 in income taxes for 2020, according to a report released late Tuesday by the congressional Joint Committee on Taxati...

IRS pauses rule requiring people to report PayPal, Venmo transactions over $600. Here’s what went wrong.

To avert taxpayer confusion in the upcoming tax season, the IRS is delaying a rule that would have required e-commerce sites and payment platforms like eBay EBAY, +0.12%, Etsy ETSY, -0.32% and PayPal ...

Your Retirement Plans Will Change With the $1.7 Trillion Federal Spending Bill

Congress is poised to approve a $1.7 trillion spending bill this week that seeks to avert a government shutdown and boost the savings of Americans by making significant changes to their retirement pla...

New electric car buying incentives kick in Jan. 1, and a lot has changed. Here’s an explainer.

Congress changed the rules governing electric car tax credits over the summer, but the changes didn’t immediately take effect. Some will kick in soon, while others will taper in over time. The evolvin...

For Landlords, Rising Housing Costs Make It Harder to Earn Passive Income

Listen to article (1 minute) Many Americans dream the path to building wealth is like a trip around the Monopoly board, buying up properties that generate rental income. That can be true, but financia...

New tax rule for eBay and Venmo will cause ‘significant confusion,’ CPAs say

As Congress concludes 2022 with a sprint to pass laws and a spending deal, tax accountants are joining a chorus of e-commerce companies and pay platforms who say a revamped tax form is about to cause ...

My mom spent $90K on bitcoin and gifts in a romance scam. Can the tax code help her?

My mom went into debt to buy bitcoin for a scammer because she thought she was in a romantic relationship with him. She also racked up credit-card debt to mail computers and gift cards to the scammer....

Dear Tax Guy: ‘I’ve accumulated a lot of junk.’ I plan to make $6,000 selling stuff on eBay. Can I put it into an IRA instead of paying income tax?

I am retired with Social Security and a state pension. Over the last 30 years I’ve accumulated a lot of “junk” from eBay EBAY, +0.17%. Now, I’m also trying to clean out my house, and sell it at cost o...

Get Big Tax Breaks for 2022 by Acting Now

It’s time to make year-end tax moves. With inflation way up and markets way down for 2022, there’s plenty to track. As in the past, most actions for tax-year 2022 must be made before Jan. 1, 2023. The...

13 Ways to Invest in India, the World’s Fastest-Growing Major Economy

India, home to more than 1.4 billion people, has long been a country with great promise and owner-led businesses accustomed to generating large amounts of cash. But India’s rise has been fitful, and o...

Did Bullard undershoot? Stifel economists say fed funds rate may need to go to 8% or even 9%.

A day after a Federal Reserve official’s market-moving admission that interest rates may need to go to as high as 7%, analysts came up with an even more surprising conclusion: that 7% still won’t be h...