The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide

Top 14 consumer stories of 2018

All in all, it’s been another bad year for consumers. President Trump and his administration’s generate so much chaos that they get all the media attention. Meanwhile in the background, federal agencies are moving forward on the administration’s conservative regulatory priorities, which are harmful to consumers. One bright spot is the Democrats taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives. That will help curb President Trump's excesses.

Here are the top 14 consumer stories for 2018:

1. The Trump administration continues decimated consumer protections.

President Trump appointed Mick Mulvaney, his budget director, as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Under Mulvaney's leadership, the bureau reversed prior actions and programs of the agency. It has delayed rules to protect consumers from payday lenders, dropped lawsuits, stripped enforcements of fair-lending protections, and reduced the number of fines issued.

President George H.W. Bush: Not a consumer champion

As President George H.W. Bush is being positively eulogized, it’s important to remember that Bush, as often is the case with most Republican, was more interested in helping business interests than consumers.

Here are some examples of how the Bush administration, and the Republican Party, have failed consumers:

But by and large, [George H.W.] Bush was an establishment president. This meant that he did not fundamentally try to fix the inequities wrought by the American model. He escalated, for instance, Reagan’s War on Drugs – leading to the mass incarceration of African-Americans, a blight that still ails the country to this day. The New Statesman

President Bush signed the biggest rewrite of U.S. bankruptcy law in a quarter century, making it harder for debt-ridden Americans to wipe out their obligations. NBC News

Will you be going into debt for holiday spending?

The 2018 holiday shopping season, like many before it, will be paid for largely by credit card debt.

After spending more than $1 trillion from November 2017 to January 2018, U.S. consumers began the new year owing more than $1 trillion to credit card companies for the first time. And even though credit card debt levels are going down a little each year, this holiday shopping season could change that.

What are consumers saying about their holiday shopping plans?  Thirty-five percent of people plan to spend more than $500 this year, according to WalletHub’s “2018 Holiday Shopping Survey.” In 2017, 33 percent said they spent that much.

Manafort, guilty – Cohen, guilty: What’s next?

Paul Manafort                        Michael Cohen

Photo: Voice of America        Photo: IowaPolitics.com

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know that I’ve written dozens of articles about how the Trump administration is slashing environmental and consumer laws and regulations as fast as it can.

To me, yesterday was a great day in terms of beginning to get some answers about the crimes being committed by members of Trump’s inner circle and, perhaps, the president himself.

Paul Manafort, 69, Trump's former campaign chairman, was found guilty Tuesday by a jury on eight counts of financial crimes. The eight counts included five tax fraud charges, one charge of hiding foreign bank accounts, and two counts of bank fraud.

Michael Cohen, 51, former longtime Trump attorney, pleaded guilty Tuesday to eight felony charges of tax fraud, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations. Cohen said he coordinated with Trump to illegally payoff two women to keep them quiet about alleged affairs with Trump.

At last, we’re beginning to get some answers on what officials in the Trump administration were up to. Cohen pointing to Trump about a campaign violation is particularly illuminating.

What’s next?

Finally: U.S. shuts down massive IRS phone scam

Twenty-one members of a massive India-based fraud and money laundering conspiracy that defrauded thousands of U.S. residents of hundreds of millions of dollars were sentenced in a Houston court last week to terms of up to 20 years. Three other conspirators were sentenced earlier this year for laundering proceeds for the conspiracy, which was operated out of India-based call centers that targeted U.S. residents in telephone fraud schemes.

“The stiff sentences imposed this week represent the culmination of the first-ever large scale, multi-jurisdiction prosecution targeting the India call center scam industry,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “This case represents one of the most significant victories to date in our continuing efforts to combat elder fraud and the victimization of the most vulnerable members of the U.S. public.”

Miteshkumar Patel, 42, of Illinois, was sentenced to serve 240 months in prison on the charge of money laundering conspiracy. Patel served as the manager of a Chicago-based crew of “runners” that laundered fraud proceeds generated by callers at India-based call centers. Those callers used scripts and lead lists to target victims throughout the United States with telefraud schemes where the callers impersonated U.S. government employees from the IRS and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Are you ready for back-to-school shopping?

It’s hard to believe, but August is almost here, and soon kids will be headed back to school.

To help parents save money, WalletHub, a personal-finance website, has released the results of its “2018 Back-to-School Shopping Survey” and “Sales-Tax Holiday Calendar” to help parents save hundreds.

Highlights of the reports include:

Have you started your income taxes yet?

My income taxes are almost finished. All I have to do is print out the forms and write out the check. It’s a relief. Since I have a writing business that involves keeping track of my expenses and mileage, it takes a long time to prepare my taxes.

For the past two years, I’ve used TurboTax. I used it several years ago, and I didn’t like it. The categories were different than how I added things up, and I found some parts of it confusing. However, last year, I figured I could call TurboTax for help when I got stuck.

In 2016, I had a bad experience with H&R Block. I couldn’t get an estimate from the receptionist on how much it might cost to get my income taxes prepared, nor could I get an estimate when I took my draft forms in and showed them to a tax preparer.

What is tax identity theft?

Monday is the start of Tax Identity Theft Awareness Week and the IRS’s tax filing season.

What is tax-related identity theft? It occurs when someone uses your Social Security number to claim your tax refund or earn wages. You might find out that it has happened when you get a notice from the IRS saying more than one tax return was filed with your Social Security Number, or IRS records show you have wage income from an employer you don’t know.

Last year, 22 percent of the identity theft complaints to the Federal Trade Commission were on tax-related identity theft, a decline from 33 percent in 2016, said Seena Gressin, attorney for the FTC’s Division of Consumer and Business Education. Total identity theft complaints to the FTC also were down, dropping to 371,157 complaints in 2017, from 399,223 in 2016. It was the second year in a row that identity theft complaints to the FTC declined.

It's a good time to organize and file your receipts

Last night, I spent several hours organizing my receipts, then filing them. If you keep receipts, which I suggest all consumers do, it's good to get them in order before the receipts for 2018 start coming in.

Since I have a small business, I need to keep track of my business expenses. So, before tax filing time, I need to separate the business receipts from the others. I also make a file for medical receipts.

Last year, I sorted my receipts at the end of the year. That was helpful in February when I began working on my taxes.

For the last several years, I've been stuffing my receipts in a plastic 4-cup measuring cup on a shelf of my kitchen cupboard. I think I'll sort my receipts weekly this year. It would save a lot of time at the end of the year.

Copyright 2017, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist

Happy Tax Day

If you’re like me, you’re slow about getting around to preparing your income taxes and you breathe a sigh of relief when they’re done.

Today, April 18, is Tax Day, delayed from April 15 due to Emancipation Day, a holiday that the District of Columbia celebrates the anniversary of the abolition of slavery.

To celebrate Tax Day, DealNews.com offers this list of free items and deals:

Great American Cookies

Great American Cookies is offering a Birthday Cake cookie for free on April 18.

Kona Ice

The outlet is giving away its tropical shaved ice cones for free.