Author: starbpo

It wasn’t a good day for the tax man when U.S. lawmakers passed a bill over the weekend to keep the government open before the holidays. Because of the law that President Joe Biden signed on Saturday, over $20 billion that was supposed to help the IRS with its long-term enforcement efforts is now frozen and can’t be used. Since 2022, when the Inflation Reduction Act gave the IRS more money, lawmakers have gone back and forth about giving it more money to make sure people pay their taxes. The goal is to do more audits of high-income households and…

Netflix is the only video service that isn’t working in December. People should be happy about this because it means they can spend less on streaming this Christmas season. You can also watch shows you missed during the year or escape reality with a famous escapist series (more on that later). This month, it shouldn’t be too hard to keep the streaming budget below $50 by strategically shutting down and adding services every month. It takes some work, but you’ll save money every month. Remember that your payment cycle doesn’t always start at the beginning of the month. It can…

Daniel Ives, a technology sector analyst at Wedbush, already had the highest price target for the iPhone maker among Wall Street experts. On Thursday, he raised it even more because he thinks interest in iPhones with AI features will grow. As trading began again after the Christmas break, Apple’s stock AAPL +0.16% fell 0.1% to $358.07 on Thursday. The stock hit a record high of $258.20 on Tuesday, up 4.1% during a four-day winning string. In the next 12 months, Ives wants Apple stock to be worth $325 a share, up from $300 a share. The new goal means that…

Most of the time, NBA games are the only big live sports events on Christmas Day. Not this year, though. There are a lot of Christmas Day games in the NFL, but they are behind Netflix’s NFLX -1.05% paywall because the streaming service paid a claimed $150 million for the rights to show them. There will be a live stream of one of the four most popular games in the U.S. for the first time. The Kansas City Chiefs, who have won the Super Bowl twice, play the Pittsburgh Steelers on Christmas Day, and the Houston Texans play the Baltimore…

People who play the lottery have had a busy month. The Mega Millions prize has grown to $1.15 billion before the drawing on December 27. There was no winner in the drawing on Christmas Eve. Numbers put together by LottoReport.com show that this is the biggest win of its kind for either of the two main multistate lottery games, Mega Millions and Powerball, in the busy month of December. Mega Millions says that the drawing on December 27 will happen at 11 p.m. Eastern time. The one-time payment is set at $516.1 million. Ticket sales naturally go through the roof…

Bitcoin has been unstable since it passed the $100,000 mark earlier this month, but crypto research company K33 says that based on past performance, a new all-time high could be in sight by the middle of January. The value of the biggest cryptocurrency, BTCUSD -0.36%, rose 6.1% on Tuesday to around $98,679 at the last check. It had been below $93,000 on Monday, but it had risen back up. Bitcoin hit a record high of $108,309 on December 17, but it and stock prices fell last week after the Federal Reserve said it would cut interest rates less in 2025…

Santa has to take care of everything. Tuesday’s holiday-shortened trading session was the start of the “Santa Claus rally.” The S&P 500 SPX +1.10% went up 1.1%, erasing a December drop as it scored its third straight gain and undoing the damage from last week’s midweek crash. The large-cap average has had a great year in 2024, but December hasn’t helped much. December is still in danger of not being one of the best months for stocks like it always is. There has been some improvement in the S&P over the last two sessions, but the rally has not been…

Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., said Trump tweaking friendly countries harkens back to an aggressive style he used during his days in business. “You ask something unreasonable and it’s more likely you can get something less unreasonable,” said Farnsworth, who is also author of the book “Presidential Communication and Character.” Greenland, the world’s largest island, sits between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. It is 80% covered by an ice sheet and is home to a large U.S. military base. It gained home rule from Denmark in 1979 and its head…

On Tuesday, trade groups for the biggest U.S. banks sued in federal court to make the U.S. Federal Reserve’s bank stress tests more open. These tests were put in place after the global financial crisis of 2008, but the Fed has already suggested some changes to the yearly process. The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio says that the Fed’s stress-test scenarios might not be realistic. It also says that the annual process that banks have to go through limits lending, which would be good for the economy. Federal law says that the American…

A good income sounds like a great deal that opens up a lot of doors, and in many ways, that’s perfectly true. Financial experts say that having a high income can be a pain when it comes time to do payroll taxes. In fact, Rachael Camp, founder and owner of Camp Wealth, recently said on the social media site X that a high income on a W-2 form can be “the worst tax deal in America.” She says that a high W-2 salary is at least $250,000. Camp told MarketWatch in an interview, “A lot of the incentives you can…