President Donald Trump has delivered on his campaign promise to eliminate taxes on tips. On July 4, 2025, he signed into law H.R. 1, the Working Families Tax Cuts (WFTC) package, which includes a provision allowing qualified individuals to deduct tips from their income for tax purposes. This deduction is capped at $25,000 and phases […]
The certainty of death and taxes brings a double blow to grieving families and at the worst possible time. And those troubling circumstances would be much worse if the Working Families Tax Cuts (WFTC) had not saved the death tax exemption from being cut in half on December 31, 2025. Thanks to President Trump and […]
Eliminating taxes on overtime pay in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) fulfills one of President Trump’s campaign promises. Individuals with hourly or non-professional jobs or earning an annual salary income less than $35,568, will be able to file for a federal income tax deduction capped at $12,500 for single filers and $25,000 for […]
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Congress enacted several laws intended to provide relief for businesses and individual, including the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020 and the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA). The CARES Act included an Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERC) for businesses and tax-exempt organizations that paid wages […]
In 1995, the House of Representatives passed a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) to the Constitution, but it failed in the Senate by a single vote. The budget deficit in fiscal year (FY) 1995 was $164 billion. It is now $38.7 trillion. On February 11, 2026, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its budget outlook for […]
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which extended and enhanced the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, included other significant benefits to taxpayers, like fulfilling the promise President Trump made during the 2024 presidential election campaign to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits. The OBBBA allows taxpayers aged 65 and over to deduct between […]
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA), which extended and enhanced the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, included other significant benefits to taxpayers, including the termination of a disastrous software program at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Citizens Against Government Waste raised the alarm for many years over the idea of allowing the IRS […]
Missouri is moving ahead with the process of eliminating the state income tax. In his January 13, 2026, State of the State Address, Governor Mike Kehoe (R) called for the income tax to be eliminated over five years. The process would require the approval of voters in the November 2026 election. On January 28, 2026, […]
Welcome to This Week in Waste, a series by Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) that highlights how taxpayer dollars are being wasted in the federal, state, and local levels of government and efforts to fight back against this spendthrift behavior. Trump Administration Cancels Green New Deal Loans After conducting a first-year review of the Department of […]
The enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that were at the center of the October government shutdown were not only made available to people making as much as $500,000 annually but also turned out to be rife with waste, fraud, and abuse. A December 3, 2025, Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed that the advanced premium […]
