Category: Taxes and Retirement

Tax season can be a confusing time, filled with cryptic codes and unfamiliar numbers when it comes to checking your refund status. If you've been scrutinizing your IRS tax transcript (free via your IRS online account) and stumbled upon "Code 806," you're not alone. This seemingly innocuous code holds real…

The IRS has quietly widened who can use Business Tax Account since it first opened to partnerships and S corporations in late 2023. As of mid-2026, C corporations, tax-exempt organizations, federal/state/local government entities, and Indian Tribal governments can all register for full online access to their tax records. That's a…

"Our mortgage would be almost double what we pay in rent right now — is that insane?" I get a version of this question constantly, and the honest answer is: that comparison is almost never the right one to make. Rent versus a future mortgage payment feels like the natural…

The 2026 tax season is officially in the books — the IRS began accepting 2025 returns on January 26, 2026, and the April 15 filing deadline has passed. If you filed on time (or on extension), you're done until next year. We now look ahead to the 2027 tax season…

Remote work didn't just change where people do their jobs — it created a genuinely more complicated tax picture for millions of workers who now live in a different state (or country) than their employer. Here's what actually matters when you file. Which State Actually Taxes Your Income? When you…

This post started with my own Avis rental years ago, where the final bill came in noticeably higher than the quote — charges I only discovered after returning the car. The dollar amount wasn't huge; the way it was disclosed felt deliberately buried. Judging by the comments this post has…

Every filing season I hear from readers who call the IRS after weeks of waiting, only to learn their refund has been frozen because they never responded to a letter — a letter they never actually received. The IRS considers the clock started the day the notice was mailed, whether…

The federal minimum benefit for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is $24 a month for a one- or two-person household in fiscal year 2026, which runs from October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026. That's up $1 from the $23 minimum that held steady for the previous three years,…

It's tax season and social media is abuzz with tax related information. This includes news related to refund payments, which millions of Americans are anxiously waiting to get. Unfortunately this also creates an environment of false information (fake news!), deceitful ideas, and outright scams around refund payments and getting them…

Seeing "Your tax return has not yet been processed" on the IRS's Where's My Refund (WMR) tool is unsettling, but it's also one of the most common status messages during filing season. It simply means the IRS hasn't finished working through your return yet — not that something is wrong.…

The date listed as your "processing date" on an IRS tax transcript is not your refund date. That distinction trips up more readers than almost anything else on this site, so I want to be direct about it up front: your refund date is whatever shows up next to transaction…

Transaction codes are used on IRS tax transcripts to show filers what has happened with their return processing, reasons for potential delays, when a refund will be paid, or why it's delayed. Given ongoing challenges getting through to a live IRS agent, many taxpayers turn to their free IRS transcript…

Under the broader umbrella of USDA nutrition assistance programs sits a smaller, less-known one: the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), which helps roughly 600,000 low-income seniors a year supplement their diets with free groceries. Unlike SNAP, which provides a monthly benefit card to spend at grocery stores, CSFP works differently:…