Author: administración

The short answer: FICA is the tax that comes out of every paycheck before income tax does, and almost everyone with a job pays it. For 2026 it’s 7.65% of your wages, with the Social Security portion capped at $184,500 of earnings. If you’re checking your first pay stub and wondering where the money went, this is the line item, and it’s separate from the federal income tax withheld a few lines above it.Your employer also pays 7.65% on your behalf, which is why many employers count FICA as part of your total compensation. If you work for yourself, you…

A federal judge in Boston stopped the Department of Homeland Security from ending “duration of status” for international students, exchange visitors and foreign journalists, one day before the change was scheduled to take effect. U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV granted a preliminary injunction on September 14 in Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration v. DHS, postponing the effective date of the final rule DHS published on July 17 under Section 705 of the Administrative Procedure Act. We covered the rule back when DHS first moved to cap international student stays at four years. Under the blocked rule,…

Doing your own taxes is way easier than it seems, and for most filers the easiest method is tax software that pulls in your W-2 and 1099s and walks you through the credits. The return you’ll file between late January and April 15, 2027 covers tax year 2026.This year, you potentially get a bigger standard deduction and four new deductions on a new schedule, so the software route is worth more than usual this year.Our parents had it rough during tax season. Doing their own taxes sometimes took a week or more. They’d spread papers and receipts across the kitchen…

Imagine kicking off a few AI tasks before bed and waking up to an $82,314 bill. Yes, that actually happened. A small development team’s Google Cloud API key got compromised and ran up $82,314 in unauthorized Gemini charges in 48 hours. Their normal monthly spend was about $180. Imagine the shock! But here’s the thing. Almost every piece of advice about using AI well is about prompting better. Write clearer instructions. Give more context. Ask follow-up questions. You know, the usual. That advice is fine… But it also won’t totally protect you from the mistakes that actually cost you something.…

Please enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser or access the information through the links provided below. September 16, 2026 Federal Reserve Board and Federal Open Market Committee release economic projections from the September 15-16 FOMC meeting For release at 2:00 p.m. EDT The attached tables and charts released on Wednesday summarize the economic projections made by Federal Open Market Committee participants in conjunction with the September 15-16 meeting. For media inquiries, email [email protected] or call 202-452-2955. Projections (PDF) | Accessible Materials Last Update: September 16, 2026

Are you someone who loves crafts and making things with your hands? Have you ever started a new craft and somehow spent $200 before you even finished your first project? I’ve definitely been there. Over the years, I’ve tried everything from embroidery and watercolor painting to crochet and paper crafts. Along the way, I’ve bought… Are you someone who loves crafts and making things with your hands? Have you ever started a new craft and somehow spent $200 before you even finished your first project? I’ve definitely been there. Over the years, I’ve tried everything from embroidery and watercolor painting…

On 5 September 1977, a Titan IIIE/Centaur rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying Voyager 1 toward Jupiter and Saturn. NASA’s Voyager FAQ gives the spacecraft’s launch mass, including hydrazine, as 815 kilograms. Forty-nine years later, the probe is still transmitting from interstellar space. NASA’s current mission-status page says Voyager 1 will reach one light-day from Earth, 16,094,799,096 miles, on 18 November 2026. At that distance, radio signals need nearly a full day to travel one way between Earth and the spacecraft. A command-and-response cycle therefore stretches across almost two days. What an RTG actually is A radioisotope thermoelectric generator…

Employment income is any money you’re paid for working. The IRS uses the term earned income for the same thing, and the two words matter because a long list of tax rules, from the Earned Income Tax Credit to whether you can fund an IRA, turn on whether your money came from work or from somewhere else.The distinction trips people up because plenty of income shows up on a tax return without being earned. Interest, dividends, passive income, Social Security, and unemployment checks are all taxable and none of them are employment income. Here’s what counts, what doesn’t, and the…

The Justice Department filed complaints last week against Hawaii, Utah, Arkansas and the District of Columbia over laws that let students without lawful immigration status pay in-state resident tuition rates at public colleges. Those four filings bring the department’s total to 25 cases, and every state with a similar law has now been sued. Each complaint focuses on two issues: the residency provisions that set the tuition rate, and the separate state scholarship and grant programs that run alongside them. “This is a simple matter of federal law: colleges cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide…

The U.S. tax code runs thousands of pages, and most of it defines what counts as income and what doesn’t. That’s where the tax breaks live. Whether you earn $30,000 or $300,000, you’re taxed under the same federal tax brackets, but how you earn the money and what you do with it changes how much of it the IRS sees.The short version: different kinds of income are taxed at different rates, and certain moves (contributing to a retirement account, holding an investment past a year, selling the house you live in) take income off the table entirely. Knowing which moves…