Author: News Room

They were conned by skilled online criminals into draining their retirement savings. After the shock, shame and grief that followed, the victims were often left with something else: an enormous income tax bill.Mary Ellen Strange, a 75-year-old widow who was deceived by fraudsters impersonating federal investigators, now owes the Internal Revenue Service an estimated $100,000 this year.Linda Gilmore, an 80-year-old former nurse, has to pay nearly $50,000.Cindy, 62, and Tina, 51, a married couple in California, owe roughly $250,000 to the federal and state governments.Lori, a sales executive in North Carolina who owed $225,000 in the 2023 tax season, decided…

Early evidence is promising. In 2023, the region added 30,000 foreign-born residents, amounting to a 23.2 percent increase in the immigrant population, according to census data. (The New York City area added 88,000, only a 1.5 percent increase.) That was almost enough to offset the loss of 34,000 native-born residents.“We have no choice but to grow, and the way in which we’re going to do that is through migration to St. Louis,” said Dustin Allison, the interim chief executive of Greater St. Louis Inc., the city’s main business group. “I’m really coldblooded about this. I need bodies, because I need…

Here’s a terrible thing that happens: Thieves pretend they’re you, file a tax return in your name very early in the year, claim a fat refund and run away with the money.When you try to file your own return, the Internal Revenue Service rejects it. After all, according to the agency’s system, your taxes have already been filed.Months, and sometimes years, of hellish red tape ensues.The I.R.S. has a tool called an identity protection PIN, or IP PIN, that can prevent this nightmare in most instances. You register and hand over some personal information so the government can verify you.…

In 2013, Jessica Lessin, a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, left the paper to start a competing publication, The Information.A few years later, her fledgling newsroom had grown to nearly two dozen reporters and editors and booked more than $20 million in sales, as she revealed in a profile I wrote for The Times’s Sunday Business. She says she has since doubled her editorial staff and continued to stay profitable, with revenue growing 30 percent in 2024 over the previous year.But it’s her investments outside of The Information that are gaining attention these days.Her company Lessin Media has put…

Nearly a month has passed since President Trump last spoke publicly of his desire to kill the carried interest loophole. (Yes, we know, some of you don’t consider it a “loophole.”) And yet the private equity industry, which stands to lose big if the president upends the tax break, is still bracing for a fight.This is the biggest challenge to the provision since it was nearly neutered three years ago under former President Joe Biden, Grady McGregor writes for DealBook.A reminder: the carried interest rule means that executives at hedge funds and P.E. and venture capital firms pay roughly 20…

This winter, Denver has faced record-breaking Arctic blasts — below-zero temperatures, heavy snowfalls and brutal wind chills. But at Barolo Grill, a longtime Italian fixture in the affluent Cherry Creek neighborhood, the mood is warm. The restaurant has just logged its most lucrative January and February since it opened in 1992.“It is actually a bit bewildering,” said the owner, Ryan Fletter. “I am thrilled and surprised.”The first two months of the year are typically the slowest period for restaurants, and many take a January hiatus. This winter has posed even more challenges: frigid weather across the country, egg prices at…

Send questions about the office, money, careers and work-life balance to [email protected]. Include your name and location, or a request to remain anonymous. Letters may be edited.An Office RomanceI have been dating a man who works at the same company as I do since 2021. Our relationship has since developed, and it has been almost three years now. We love and trust each other, and since we are both in our mid-thirties (an age considered appropriate for marriage in Korea, where we live), we have decided to get married next year.For the past three years, I have kept the fact…

At the end of February, the House of Representatives passed a budget calling for up to $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years.Now, the haggling begins.Many of the tax cuts from the 2017 tax bill, which passed during President Trump’s first term, are set to expire at the end of this year. He wants them renewed, and Congress has shown little appetite for crossing him.Extending those provisions would eat up most of that $4.5 trillion, and on the campaign trail, Mr. Trump floated many additional ideas for tax cuts that would cost a lot of money. Few are likely…

As President Trump puts new tariffs on goods from China and threatens a trade war with allies like Mexico and Canada, one global company is likely to suffer less than most of its competitors: Tesla.But the electric car maker led by Elon Musk, which accounts for a third of the billionaire’s wealth, is also vulnerable if relations with China worsen. That country is the company’s second-largest market after the United States and it produces more cars there than anywhere else.Tesla has built largely self-sufficient supply chains in the United States and China, a rarity in a world of interconnected trade.…

China announced tariffs of up to 100 percent on canola, pork and other foods from Canada on Saturday, in retaliation for Canada’s decision last August to collect steep taxes on imports of Chinese electric vehicles, steel and aluminum.The Chinese tariffs, which take effect on March 20, were also a clear warning to Canada — and, indirectly, Mexico — not to cooperate with the United States on trade. The Trump administration, like the Biden administration before it, has been demanding that Canada and Mexico not serve as back doors for low-cost Chinese goods to enter the U.S. market under North American…