| Morning from Chattanooga, |
| A $20,000 refund from the IRS sounds like a good week. Then you meet Wilson Perry Kirby, a 76-year-old farmer here in Tennessee who has spent years trying to give one back. His story is below, along with a real change in how the IRS handles penalty forgiveness and a scam warning for families. |
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By the numbers
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$20,000
IRS refund sent by mistake
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6.5 million
families enrolled in Trump Accounts
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12.5%
high end of new tariffs
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IN THIS ISSUE
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1.The penalty break you had to ask for is now automatic
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2.He tried to give $20,000 back to the IRS. He's still trying.
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3.Treasury's warning for 6.5 million Trump Account families
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4.Tariffs return at 10% to 12.5%
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The lead · PENALTY RELIEF
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The penalty break you had to ask for is now automatic
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| The IRS is retiring First Time Abate, the one-free-pass penalty waiver, and replacing it with what it calls an Automatic Exemption. |
| Under the old system, a taxpayer with a clean record who got hit with a late-filing or late-payment penalty had to request the waiver, and in our experience plenty of people who qualified never knew to ask. The new version is built to apply on its own. Accounting Today calls it a change in how relief 'gets delivered to millions of taxpayers,' not a minor procedural tweak. |
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Why it matters: If you ever file or pay late, the one-time forgiveness you used to have to request should now arrive without the ask, though it's still worth reading any penalty notice closely before you pay it.
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Read at Accounting Today →
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CLOSE TO HOME
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He tried to give $20,000 back to the IRS. He's still trying.
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| Wilson Perry Kirby, 76, got a refund the IRS never meant to send, and giving it back has turned into a years-long dispute. |
| The Tennessee farmer tried to return the $20,000, and CPA Practice Advisor reports he is still fighting to get it resolved years later. An erroneous refund never truly becomes yours, because the IRS can demand it back, so the worst thing you can do is spend it. |
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Why it matters: If a check or deposit from the IRS ever shows up that doesn't match your return, leave the money alone and start a paper trail before anything else.
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Read at CPA Practice Advisor →
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SCAM ALERT
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Treasury's warning for 6.5 million Trump Account families
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| More than 6.5 million families have signed up for the new Trump Accounts, and the Treasury Department is already posting tips to help them steer clear of scams. |
| The draw is real, including a $1,000 federal contribution for more than 1.5 million eligible children, and anything with government money attached tends to attract impostors. Our shorthand: manage the account only through official channels you navigated to yourself, and treat any message that reaches you first as suspect. |
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Why it matters: For parents who have enrolled, the safe habit is typing the official address yourself every time and ignoring calls or texts that claim to be about your child's account.
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Read the full story →
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COST WATCH
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Tariffs return at 10% to 12.5%
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| After the Supreme Court struck down the last version, the administration has rebuilt its tariffs, with duties of 10% to 12.5% coming on imports from most major trading partners. |
| For families, this mostly arrives slowly through sticker prices. For a business that buys inventory or materials from overseas, directly or through a U.S. distributor, it can land on the very next order. |
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Why it matters: If your margins depend on imported goods, this is the week to ask suppliers what's changing before you lock in fall prices or quote long-running jobs.
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Read the full story →
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Quick hits
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• The IRS's criminal division says back-to-school season brings a wave of scams aimed at parents and students, from fake online shops to scholarship fraud. →
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• Social Security has expanded its online self-service tools and notices for people working through disability claims and appeals. →
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• The SEC is weighing a proposal to make electronic delivery the default for investor documents, which could shift brokerage paperwork from your mailbox to your inbox. →
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Tip of the week
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A mid-year withholding checkup
We're past the midpoint of 2026, which makes this the window to sanity-check your paycheck withholding. Compare the year-to-date federal income tax withheld on your latest pay stub against the 'total tax' line of your 2025 return; at this point in the year you'd want to be a little more than halfway there, assuming your income is similar. If you're far off in either direction, a W-4 update now spreads the correction across the rest of the year's paychecks instead of leaving it all for next April.
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How was this issue?
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Until next week,
Marcus, CPA & founder
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| P.S. If an IRS notice or an unexpected check lands in your mailbox this summer, send us a photo before you act on it — that's a July conversation we'd much rather have than an April one. Stay cool out there; we're headed for 95 today. |