Picture two couples, each with a baby born this year, each routing $2,500 of salary into that child’s Trump Account through an employer’s payroll system. One couple sits in the 35% bracket. The other, at roughly $65,000 of taxable income, is in the 12% bracket. Both contributions escape federal income tax. The first couple’s bill shrinks by $875. The second couple’s bill shrinks by $300. Same account, same dollars, nearly three times the benefit for the household that needed it less.

That arithmetic is the quiet story inside what has been presented as a workplace convenience.

Congress Built the Benefit – The IRS Just Wrote the Manual

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act already let employers put up to $2,500 a year into an employee’s or a dependent’s Trump Account without adding to the worker’s income, and it already allowed a company to run that contribution through a Section 125 cafeteria plan so the employee funds a child’s account out of pre-tax salary. Employers could begin on July 4, 2026. What Treasury and the IRS published on Aug. 11 is the operating manual: how to structure the program, how nondiscrimination testing works, and a safe harbor for companies that want to match the government’s $1,000.

The Break Stops at the Income Tax Line

It is easy to overstate what “pre-tax” buys here. The exclusion applies to federal income tax only. The money stays wages for Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment tax purposes. So, the savings amount to nothing more than the sum deferred multiplied by the filer’s top income tax rate, which is precisely why $2,500 is worth $875 to a 35% taxpayer and $300 to a 12% taxpayer.

Postponed for Decades, Not Years

Nor is the tax forgiven. Nothing can be withdrawn throughout the rule’s growth period, which runs until January 1 of the year the child turns 18. From that date, the account behaves like any other traditional IRA, meaning a 10% additional tax on distributions taken before age 59½ unless an exception applies, on top of ordinary income tax. The realistic horizon is four decades or more, not the college fund some families picture.

On the basics: Trump Accounts, Section 530A of the code, came out of last year’s OBBBA. A child who is a U.S. citizen born from 2025 through 2028 can receive a one-time $1,000 federal deposit, though it is not automatic. A parent has to open the account and elect the deposit on Form 4547, and the child needs a Social Security number. Contributions from all sources top out at $5,000 a year at current levels, indexed for inflation after 2027. The money must sit in a fund tracking a broad index of mostly U.S. stocks, with no leverage and fees capped at a tenth of a percent.

Taxation on the way out follows the money’s path in. Dollars contributed with after-tax income create basis and come back untaxed. Everything else, meaning the federal $1,000, employer contributions, pre-tax payroll elections and all investment earnings, is ordinary income when withdrawn.

Not Every Parent Will Get the Chance

Access tilts the same direction. Mercer surveyed close to 350 employers in April and found roughly 4% expecting to launch a contribution program in 2026 or 2027, with about two-thirds ruling it out. Adoption skews toward large firms with real benefits infrastructure, the same employers already offering generous 401(k) matches. A parent at a small company may never see the option. Anyone self-employed is excluded by rule: partners, sole proprietors, and more-than-2% S corporation shareholders cannot make the pre-tax election even if their own company sponsors a program for its common-law employees.

There is a planning burden, too. Households with finite savings already ration dollars across retirement accounts, 529 plans and emergency reserves. A pre-tax Trump Account election adds another comparison, and the families most likely to get it right are the ones who can afford advice.

Conclusion

The regulations are proposals. Written comments close Sept. 25, and a hearing is set for Oct. 15, so the final text could shift. Employers may rely on the proposed rules in the meantime. What is unlikely to shift is the underlying arithmetic. The $1,000 from Treasury lands identically in every eligible child’s account. The pre-tax payroll option does not, and its value climbs with the parent’s bracket.

For the first time since 2022, the IRS is changing standard mileage rates in the middle of the tax year. If you track business, medical or moving miles, this matters. Starting July 1, 2026, the numbers go up, and your recordkeeping needs to get more precise.

What Changed and Why

The IRS bumped the business mileage rate from 72.5 cents to 76 cents per mile for travel on or after July 1, 2026. Medical and moving rates rose from 20.5 cents to 23.5 cents. The charitable rate stays put at 14 cents, where it has been stuck since 1998.

The trigger was fuel prices. When the IRS set the original 2026 rates back in December, gas was averaging about $2.89 per gallon nationally. By mid-July 2026, AAA reported the average had climbed to roughly $3.87, an increase of 34 percent. Much of that spike traces back to the war in Iran and uncertainty around oil production and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The last time the IRS made a midyear adjustment was 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine and gas prices surged past $5 per gallon in some markets.

Two Sets of Rates for One Year

This creates a split year for mileage calculations. Miles driven from January 1 through June 30 use the original rates. Miles driven on or after July 1 use the revised rates. If you drove 4,000 medical miles before July and another 4,000 after, you would calculate them separately: $820 for the first half at 20.5 cents, $940 for the second half at 23.5 cents.

The same logic applies to employer reimbursements. The new rates kick in only when both the expense and the reimbursement occur on or after July 1. Employers running accountable plans should review their policies to make sure they are applying the correct rate based on when the travel happened and when the payment goes out.

Why the Rates Differ by Category

The business rate is higher because it accounts for both fixed and variable costs of operating a vehicle: depreciation, insurance, maintenance, tires, gas and oil. Medical and moving rates cover only variable costs, which is why they sit lower.

The charitable rate is a different animal entirely. Congress set it by statute, and it has not budged in nearly three decades. Adjusted for inflation, 14 cents from 1998 would be closer to 29 cents today.

Who Can Actually Use These Rates

Here is where it gets narrower than many taxpayers expect. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminated the deduction for unreimbursed employee business expenses starting in 2018, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act made that change permanent. Most employees cannot write off business mileage whether their employer reimburses them or not.

Moving expense deductions are similarly limited. Only active duty military members moving under orders for a permanent change of station qualify, along with certain intelligence community members under rules effective for 2026.

Charitable mileage requires itemizing, which means it only helps if your total deductions exceed the standard deduction of $16,100 for single filers or $32,200 for married couples filing jointly. Many taxpayers skip it.

Self-employed individuals and business owners get the most benefit from the business rate since they can still deduct qualifying mileage on Schedule C.

Recordkeeping Just Got Harder

Normally, tracking mileage means logging dates, destinations, miles driven, and business purpose. This year, you also need to note which side of July 1 the expense falls on. A mileage app can help, but a notebook or spreadsheet works, too.

If you use a vehicle exclusively for business, beginning and end-of-year odometer readings establish total mileage. Photos can serve as backup. If you mix business and personal use, your records need to clearly separate the two.

Conclusion

Gas prices forced the IRS’s hand, and now 2026 has two mileage rate regimes. The math is not complicated, but the documentation requirements are tighter than usual. Know when your miles were driven, keep clean records and make sure your employer’s reimbursement policies reflect the July 1 cutoff. The details matter this year more than most.

A county in Michigan was owed about $2,200 in back taxes. To collect it, the government took a home worth close to $200,000, auctioned it for a fraction of that, and called the matter settled. The family is now putting a simple question to the Supreme Court: when the state sells your house over a small debt, does it owe you the real worth of what it took or only whatever the auction happened to fetch?

The Rule that is Already on the Books

Three years ago, the court drew a clear line. Geraldine Tyler, then in her 90s, had let a $2,311 levy on a Minneapolis condo balloon to about $15,000 once penalties and interest stacked up. Hennepin County took the unit, found a buyer at $40,000, and held onto all of it. By any fair reckoning, the $25,000 above her debt was Tyler’s money – even though the county walked away with it. Minnesota law blessed that, as did 11 other states and the District of Columbia, plus nine more states under narrower terms.

A unanimous court ended the practice. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that a government can sell property to satisfy a tax debt but cannot help itself to more than the debt is worth. Leftover equity belongs to the owner, and a state cannot dodge that by defining the property interest away.

The Question Tyler Left Hanging

Tyler was tidy because the surplus was undeniable. Subtract a debt near $15,000 from a $40,000 sale, and the leftover is beyond dispute. The justices never had to confront the messier case where the sale price itself is artificially low. If a forced auction brings in far less than a home would fetch on the open market, is that depressed number really the measure of what the owner lost?

That is the gap, and tax auctions are where it opens. Unlike an ordinary listing, these sales draw a thin crowd of investors and speculators, and the government has little reason to chase top dollar. A county could therefore obey Tyler to the letter, hand back every cent of the auction surplus, and still watch most of a family’s equity vanish.

How the Pung Family Got Here

Three-and-a-half decades ago, Timothy Scott Pung paid $125,000 for a roughly 3,000-square-foot house in Isabella County, and for years it carried Michigan’s Principal Residence Exemption. Scott died in 2004, and his wife in 2008. Their son Marc stayed on, assuming the exemption rolled forward without any new filing. The assessor saw it otherwise and stripped the break retroactively. Marc fought back, and a state tax tribunal agreed no further paperwork had ever been required.

The assessor would not let it go. Over a shortfall of $2,241.93, on a place the county itself pegged at $194,400, the family was thrown out, and the home went under the hammer for $76,000. Nobody disputes that the estate is owed the surplus. The quarrel is how to measure it. Isabella County treats the surplus as the hammer price minus the debt, leaving about $74,000. The estate says the yardstick should be the home’s true market value minus the debt, pushing the number toward $194,400. The spread tops $100,000.

Bigger Than One House

The stakes reach far past Michigan. Minnesota alone moved more than 4,300 properties through these sales between 2014 and 2020. Across the 1,200-plus that were family homes, the typical owner lost some 92 percent of the equity above the debt, averaging around $207,000 against bills averaging just $17,000. In the nation’s capital, a veteran with dementia lost a $200,000 home over $133.88.

There is a second front, too. The estate contends the foreclosure worked as an excessive fine barred by the Eighth Amendment, a theory the lower court waved off as ordinary tax collection but one that Justices Gorsuch and Jackson have flagged for review.

Argument wrapped on Feb. 25 with a ruling likely any day now. The court has already said the government cannot keep more than it is owed. Now it must decide whether that shield covers only the cash left after the gavel, or the equity that vanished before.