The IRS may look at your social media if you're being audited

Check out a list of 15 red flags that might result in an IRS audit

The Internal Revenue Service has audited less than 1% of all individual tax returns. If you're still worried about being audited, know that some people are more likely to be audited than others, such as people who make a lot of money and those who take large charitable deductions.

Watch what happens if you commit tax evasion, from phone calls to property seizure

Tax Day is one of the most dreaded days for working Americans. The IRS responds differently to late filings and late payments. If you don't file at all, the IRS might freeze your assets.

Created in 1862, the IRS has a scandalous history

From Al Capone's tax evasion to corruption and bribery within the IRS, the government agency has had its fair share of scandals. This article details many of them, outlining corruption that reveals this seemingly boring agency as anything but.

The IRS already has much of the data it asks Americans to report when filing their taxes

Americans spend more than 7.9 billion hours per year doing their taxes: It's notoriously time-consuming, requiring forms, deductions, and often third-party help. But here's the twist: The IRS already has much of the data it asks you to report. Americans still have to do the work themselves partly due to big tax prep companies that lobby to keep the status quo.

In addition to collecting taxes, issuing tax refunds, and performing audits, the IRS is tasked with enforcing the laws listed in the Internal Revenue Code

The Internal Revenue Code is also known as Title 26 of the US Code. It was enacted in 1925 and outlines income, estate, sales, payroll, and excise tax laws.

How to owe nothing on your federal tax return

Do you know you can avoid owing the IRS money come tax season by making changes to your W-4? For context, a W-4 is the form you fill out when you first start a new job. It tells your new company how much money to withhold from each paycheck for taxes. Find out how to avoid writing a check to the IRS each April in this article.

It cost the IRS $0.36 to collect $100 in 2024

It costs the IRS a significant amount of money to do part of its job—collecting money. For instance, the Internal Revenue Service spent $16.1B to collect $4.7T in taxes in 2023.

Read about a dating simulation game that helps prepare your income taxes

For the 2022 tax year, prank-playing creative studio MSCHF created a dating simulation game that helped taxpayers prepare their income taxes. In "Tax Heaven 3000," players interact with anime love interest Iris (it's like IRS), and run through a series of questions that complete their taxes. Iris also warns the player to stay away from tax-preparation companies like TurboTax.

Read about what happened when one woman started filing income taxes again

Even though she was 35 and had a 14-year-old son, Gabriela Gallegos's mother had claimed her as a dependent on her tax forms for roughly a decade. After that particularly tumultuous ten-year span of Gallegos's life came to a close, she decided to file income taxes again.

Learn how tax credits are applied to income taxes

Tax credits are directly subtracted from the amount of money taxpayers owe on their annual income. Unlike tax deductions, credits reduce the owed amount while deductions reduce how much income is taxable. There are different types of tax credits that are either fully or partially paid out.

Half of the richest people in the US are finding ways around death taxes

One of the main purposes of the federal estate tax is to crack down on generational wealth, so wealth isn't concentrated among a select few. However, the ultra-rich have found ways around paying these taxes. This ProPublica article investigates the practices used by half of the 100 richest people in the US to avoid death taxes.

A rising number of Social Security beneficiaries are taxed on their Social Security income

That’s because while Social Security benefits increase with wages and inflation, the income limits for taxing those benefits stay the same and don’t adjust over time.

Traditional IRAs are tax-deferred—meaning you’ll pay taxes when you withdraw funds during retirement, rather than before you invest in the IRA

You can typically deduct traditional IRA contributions from your taxes. To invest in a Roth IRA, on the other hand, you must contribute money that has already been taxed.

Learn about the Beatles song 'Taxman,' which was inspired by Britain's tax structure

In the US, many people think of the IRS as the "taxman"—but the Beatles song is actually about the tax structure in the UK at the time. George Harrison wrote the song when he realized that even though the Beatles had started earning money, "we were actually giving most of it away in taxes," as he wrote in his autobiography.

See comparisons of different countries' taxation strategies

Taxes are a major revenue source for most countries, and how each government taxes citizens often reflects the country's economy. Developed countries tax at much higher rates than developing ones, and as a country grows its GDP, it also typically grows the proportional percentage of taxes it gains from its citizens.

Calculate how much of your tax dollars go to each federal program based on your income, filing status, and number of children

Calculate your capital gains tax bill

If mental math is not your forte, a handy tool can help you figure out what you owe at tax time. Find the purchase and sales price of an asset, your taxable income, your tax filing status, and the length of time you held said asset, and you'll get your total for Uncle Sam.

Investigation finds 'influencer' dietitians paid to promote sugar, supplements on social media

A joint investigation by The Examiner and The Washington Post found that food, beverage, and supplement corporations and groups have paid registered dietitians on social media to promote content that goes against decades of scientific evidence on...

Google Search trends reveal truths about society that traditional surveys miss

Studies of human behavior show that survey respondents may lie to present themselves more favorably. By studying anonymous search data, researchers have uncovered hidden racism, mental health struggles, and interest in taboo or stigmatized topics.

The IRS answers basic questions about 529 savings plans

The plans can be used to pay for any qualifying education expenses from kindergarten to college, including tuition, fees, room and board, and even computers. Anyone can set up as many 529 plans as they want for relatives, friends, or themselves.

Credit monitoring services may oversell the benefits of dark web monitoring

Currently, technology exists to scrape and download data from webpages, which can then be analyzed to identify a user's information. However, scrapers cannot access or remove personal data from dark websites because they are often protected by paywalls, rendering monitoring ineffective beyond reporting publicly available data breaches.

A guide to gig-worker taxes and the new Venmo rule

Tax laws are catching up to modern freelancers. Starting with income made in 2024, gig workers will have to report the earnings they receive via apps like Venmo and PayPal differently. The main change: workers will have to detail all app earnings above $5,000 (previously, it was $20,000), and that’ll eventually drop to $600. This guide explains what that’ll mean and answers common questions about the new rule.

AI could be increasing the opportunities for financial fraud

Systems that can reproduce near perfect counterfeits of legitimate financial documents are increasingly prevalent and sophisticated. The international Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimate organizations lose about 5% of revenue to fraud each year.

Reinvested dividends are not a way to dodge paying capital gains taxes

When an investor holds stock in a company that pays a dividend—a portion of its profits directly returned to shareholders as monthly or quarterly payments—they can choose to hold that dividend in cash, spend it, or reinvest it into more shares of that company’s stock.

How to help teens balance social media use and mental healthcare

While initially alluring, excessive social media use is proven to lead to increased feelings of isolation, mental health declines, increased stress, and general dissatisfaction among teens. Conducting digital audits to track screen time, adding friction (or obstacles) to app usage to reduce mindless scrolling, and investing time in offline activities and hobbies may help.

How to catch a TikTok thief

Someone took a 10-second clip of a parody video made by Hugh Clegg and posted it to TikTok, where it racked up millions of views. The uncredited clip meant viewers assumed it was owned by the uploader, an assumption Clegg was eager to rectify. His messages and comments had no real effect outside of earning him temporary bans for "spamming." So he decided to moonlight as a private eye.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Some coin denominations have ridges etched on their sides, partly to prevent counterfeiting, in a practice called 'reeding.'

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

The first steps to rebuilding your credit score include getting to know exactly what's on your credit report and figuring out how far you are from the '700 club,' or 'good score' range.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Hookworm infection, though risky, may help fight certain autoimmune conditions by tamping down the immune system's inflammatory response.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

Poison ivy's rash-causing compound is found in the plant's roots, stem, and leaves—so coming into contact with any part of the plant can lead to rashes for the 85% of people who are allergic to it.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

In 2026, Finland was named the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year based on its wealth, social safety network, and high life expectancy, among other factors.

Scientists have struggled to pin down Ebola's natural reservoir species for decades, but the available evidence suggests that it's very likely fruit and insect-eating bats found in Africa.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Some renewable energy sources may weaken the resiliency of electric grids by removing outage buffers provided by coal- and natural gas-fired plants, which provide the system with more time to find a new power source if a plant goes down.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.