January 26, 2026
It’s tax time. The IRS will officially start accepting and processing your tax return today. But if you’re used to getting your refund in a paper check – you may want to change that. I’ll tell you why in a second.
But first – the IRS announced that the official first day of tax filing season is January 26th. Of course you could have submitted your tax return before that but has been just sitting there. The acceptance and processing starts today. If you’re not an early bird – you will have until April 15 to file your tax returns and pay any taxes you may owe.
It’s also important to know that there are a lot of things that have changed with your taxes this year because of the big beautiful bill. I actually did a whole video about that a few weeks ago…of course the no tax on tips, no tax on overtime and the no tax on car loan interest – just to name a few. It’s also worth noting that those names are a little deceiving because it’s not no tax on all overtime. Its on qualified overtime and it’s only on the half part of your time and a half. And it’s only up to $12,500 for single filers and $25,000 for joint married filers. If you have questions about any of these new provisions, the IRS just put out helpful FAQs that can answer your questions about your particular situation
Lastly – if you normally get your tax refund through a paper check – you should know that President Trump signed an executive order when he came into office to “modernize” the IRS. And part of that modernization is to get rid of the paper refund check. In fact, according to the IRS they began phasing those paper checks out on September 30th of last year. That means you will need to get a bank account so you can receive your refund in a direct deposit. Now – this shouldn’t be a problem because the vast vast majority of taxpayers are already getting their tax refunds through direct deposit but the IRS says about 7% of taxpayers are still getting a paper check. Now if you are one of those, and you don’t have a bank account – and don’t have access to direct deposit – the IRS says you may be eligible for treasury-sponsored alternative. It’s important to know that –as of right now—there’s no information about those alternatives and the IRS isn’t specifically saying that they won’t send you a paper refund check this year. But they’re definitely saying they’ve already phased out paper checks “to the extent permitted by law” so you need to figure out how to get a bank account so they can directly deposit your money.
Read more from the IRS about this tax filing season here.
Read FAQs on new tax provisions here.
Read more about phasing out of paper checks here.
