Retirement & Taxes
Long-term financial planning, retirement accounts, government benefits, tax law, and IRS rules. Covers the intersection of policy and personal finance that affects how people save, invest, and plan ahead.
Latest in Retirement & Taxes
Nursing-home care can run past $100,000 a year, and Medicare rarely covers a long stay
A year in a nursing home now carries a median price of $129,575 for a private room and $114,975 for a semi-private one, according to...
A Medigap plan can cover the 20% of costs Original Medicare leaves you to pay
Original Medicare pays 80 percent of the approved cost for most Part B services, and leaves the remaining 20 percent coinsurance to the patient, with...
A Medicare Advantage denial can be appealed, and a large share of denials get overturned
Millions of Medicare Advantage enrollees who ask an insurer to reconsider a denied prior-authorization request end up winning. Insurers made 52.8 million prior-authorization determinations in...
Medicare’s skilled-nursing coverage drops to partial after 20 days and ends at 100
Medicare’s coverage of a skilled nursing facility stay is not a flat guarantee; it is a taper that tightens in stages. The program pays the...
A three-day hospital stay is still the gateway to Medicare’s nursing-home coverage
Medicare will not pay for a stay in a skilled nursing facility unless a patient spent at least three consecutive days as a hospital inpatient,...
Medicaid’s five-year look-back can penalize gifts made before applying for nursing-home coverage
Federal law requires every Medicaid long-term care applicant to disclose 60 months of financial history, and a cash gift, a forgiven loan, or a house...
A revocable living trust can move a house and accounts to heirs without a court process
A revocable living trust can move a house, a brokerage account, or a bank balance directly to the people named to inherit it, without the...
A small-estate affidavit can let heirs skip probate when an estate is modest
A small estate can clear a bank’s front desk in an afternoon once a family has the right piece of paper: a small-estate affidavit, sworn...
Naming a beneficiary on an account skips probate and pays heirs directly
A named beneficiary on a bank account, a retirement plan, or a life insurance policy receives that money directly the moment the account holder dies,...
Trading a pension for a lump sum feels tempting, but the buyout often shortchanges the retiree
A company pension that offers to convert a lifetime monthly benefit into a single lump-sum check looks like a windfall, but the number behind that...
The federal pension insurer keeps a searchable list of unpaid benefits from ended plans
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. is still holding retirement money that private-sector employers set aside for workers they lost track of when a pension plan...
A federal database now helps workers track down old, forgotten 401(k) money
A federal search tool now lets workers check whether a former employer’s 401(k) or pension plan still owes them money, using only a Social Security...
Low-income retirees can sell investments in the 0% capital-gains bracket and owe nothing
The federal tax code holds a bracket that surprises even longtime retirees: a 0% rate on long-term capital gains, and it isn’t a rounding trick...
The IRS is ending paper refund checks, so refunds now require a bank account
The Internal Revenue Service stopped issuing most individual paper refund checks after Sept. 30, 2025, carrying out Executive Order 14247’s mandate to move federal payments...
The saver’s credit can hand lower-income workers back up to half of what they save for retirement
A federal tax break already lets lower-income workers recover as much as half of what they put into a retirement account, yet it remains one...
Your first required retirement withdrawal can wait until April 1, but doubling up can spike taxes
The IRS lets savers postpone their very first required minimum distribution past age 73, pushing the deadline to April 1 of the following year instead...
Skip a required retirement withdrawal after 73 and the penalty can reach 25%
Retirees who miss a required withdrawal from a traditional IRA, 401(k) or similar retirement account face one of the tax code’s steepest automatic penalties: an...
After a Medicaid recipient dies, the state can bill the estate and claim the family home
Since 1993, federal law has required every state Medicaid program to recover certain costs from the estates of enrollees who received long-term care before they...
A health savings account can quietly become a tax-free retirement fund for medical bills
The IRS confirmed this year that someone with self-only coverage can contribute up to $4,400 to a health savings account in 2026, and $8,750 for...
You can appeal a high-income Medicare premium surcharge after retiring, using a single form
A retiree can end up paying a Medicare surcharge sized to a salary they no longer earn, because Social Security sets the charge using a...