If the IRS charged you a late-filing or late-payment penalty and you have a clean record for the prior three years, you can usually get it removed with one phone call. It is called first-time abate, and it is administrative — you do not have to prove a good excuse, only a clean history. Most […]
If you filed a joint return and your spouse or ex-spouse understated the tax, you can ask the IRS to release you from that debt. The request is Form 8857, and there are three different kinds of relief on the one form — innocent spouse relief, separation of liability, and equitable relief. Which one you […]
If Social Security says your Medicare premium is going up because of your income, and your income has since dropped because you retired, you can ask them to use your current income instead. The form is SSA-44, and it works — but only for a specific list of life-changing events. This is the single most […]
The Medicare Part B late enrollment penalty is 10% of the standard premium for each full 12-month period you could have had Part B and did not. It is added to your monthly premium and, in most cases, you pay it for as long as you have Part B. It is not a one-time fine. […]
An ABLE account lets a person with a disability save money without blowing past the $2,000 SSI resource limit. The first $100,000 in an ABLE account is excluded from SSI resources entirely, and the whole balance is excluded for Medicaid. The change that matters right now: starting with tax year 2026, eligibility opens to people […]
You can take a Social Security survivor benefit first and switch to your own retirement benefit later — or take your own first and switch to the survivor benefit. Survivor benefits are exempt from the deemed filing rules, which is what makes the two-step strategy possible for widows and widowers when it is not possible […]
Yes — there are two ways to undo a Social Security retirement claim, and they work very differently. Within 12 months of your first payment, you can withdraw the application entirely using Form SSA-521. You repay every dollar paid on your record and it is as if you never filed. You get one of these […]
The Social Security Fairness Act eliminated the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset. If you spent a career in a job that did not pay into Social Security — many teachers, firefighters, police officers, and some federal and state employees — your Social Security benefit is no longer cut because of that pension. […]
If your income is above your state’s Medicaid limit, a spend down can still get you covered. You subtract your incurred medical bills from your income, and once those bills bring you down to the state’s medically needy standard, Medicaid pays for the rest of the period. Think of it as a deductible you meet […]
A SNAP overpayment notice means the state says it issued you more food benefits than you were entitled to. You have three separate options and they are not mutually exclusive: request a fair hearing to contest it, negotiate a repayment plan, or ask the state to compromise part of the balance. The one thing that […]