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Tax filing season is underway, and the IRS expects 164 million people will file returns by April 15. The average refund last year was $3,167. This year, analysts have projected it could be $1,000 higher, thanks to changes in tax law. More than 165 million individual income tax returns were processed last year, with 94% submitted electronically. People with straightforward returns should not encounter delays, but because of an exodus of IRS workers since the start of the Trump administration, the national taxpayer advocate has cautioned that the 2026 tax filing season is likely to present challenges for those who run into problems filing. While last year IRS employees were not permitted to accept a buyout offer from the Trump administration until after the taxpayer filing deadline, many of those customer service workers have now left. The IRS started 2025 with about 102,000 employees and finished with roughly 74,000 after a series of firings and layoffs led by the Department of Government Efficiency. Heres what to know: When refunds will go out If you file electronically, the IRS says it should take 21 days or less to receive your refund. If you choose direct deposit, it should take even less time. If you file a paper return, the refund could take four weeks or more, and if your return requires amendments or corrections, it could take longer. The IRS cautions that taxpayers not rely on receiving a refund by a certain date, especially when making major purchases or paying bills. How to check the status of your refund Taxpayers can use the online tool Wheres My Refund? to check the status of their refund within 24 hours of e-filing and generally within four weeks of filing a paper return. The Wheres My Refund? tool will also provide projected deposit dates for most early EITC/ACTC refund filers by Feb. 21, according to the IRS. Information related to this tool is updated once daily, overnight. To access the status of your refund, youll need: Your Social Security or individual taxpayer ID number (ITIN) Taxpayers can also consult the IRS2Go app, or their IRS Individual Online Account, to check their refund status. How tax refunds work If you paid more through the year than you owe in tax, due to withholding or other reasons, you should get money back. Even if you didnt pay excess tax, you may still get a refund if you qualify for a refundable credit, like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) or Child Tax Credit. To get your refund, you must file a return, and you have three years to claim a tax refund. Who qualifies for the Earned Income Tax Credit To qualify for the EITC, you must have under $11,950 in investment income and earn less than a specific income level from working. If youre single with no children, your income level must be $19,104 or below. And if youre married filing jointly with three or more children, you must make $68,675 or below. To determine if your household qualifies based on your marital status and your number of dependents you can use the online EITC Assistant tool. Who qualifies for the Child Tax Credit and Additional Child Tax Credit If you have a child, you are most likely eligible for the Child Tax Credit. The credit is up to $2,200 per qualifying child. To qualify, a child must: Have a Social Security number Be under age 17 at the end of 2025 Be your son, daughter, stepchild, eligible foster child, brother, sister, stepbrother, stepsister, half-brother, half-sister, or a descendant of one of these (for example, a grandchild, niece or nephew) Not provide more than half of his or her own support for the tax year Have lived with you for more than half the tax year Be claimed as a dependent on your tax return Not file a joint return for the year (or filed the joint return only to claim a refund of taxes withheld or estimated taxes) Be a U.S. citizen, U.S. national or a U.S. resident alien You qualify for the full amount of the Child Tax Credit for each qualifying child if you meet all eligibility factors and your annual income is not more than $200,000 ($400,000 if filing a joint return). You qualify for the Additional Child Tax Credit if ($1,700 per qualifying child) if you meet these factors and have little or no federal income tax liability. You must have earned income of at least $2,500 to be eligible for the ACTC. When the tax credits will become available The IRS expects most refunds for the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit and the Additional Child Tax Credit to be available in bank accounts or on debit cards by March 2 for taxpayers who choose direct deposit. Some taxpayers may receive their refund earlier, depending on their financial institution. Whats different this year This year, most taxpayers must provide their routing and account numbers to receive refunds directly deposited into their bank accounts. That’s because the IRS began phasing out paper tax refund checks on Sept. 30 in accordance with an executive order. ___ The Associated Press receives support from the Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism. Cora Lewis, Associated Press
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Virginia-based Gerber Products Company is voluntarily recalling limited batches of Gerber Arrowroot Biscuits, a cookie-like snack meant for children 10 months or older. On January 26, the baby food and snack producer issued the voluntary recall due to the potential presence of soft plastic and paper pieces that “should not be consumed,” the company said this week. The material comes from a supplier of arrowroot flour that initiated its own recall, Gerber said. The company said it was no longer working with the supplier, though it did not name the supplier in its recall notice on Monday. No illnesses or injuries have been reported. Gerber says it is issuing the recall “out of an abundance of caution.” On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published the recall notice on its website. What products are included in the recall? The nationwide recall applies to limited batches of 5.5-ounce Gerber Arrowroot Biscuits, produced between July 2025 and September 2025. Gerber emphasizes that no other products are impacted. Product packaging images and other details are included n the FDA’s website. Gerber markets the products as “crawler snacks,” and “baby’s first biscuit,” noting that the treats dissolve easily. It alternatively describes the product as cookies. Customers should check the back of the product packaging to verify whether their package is included in the recall. Each package has a 10-digit batch code listed next to the best-before date. The best-before dates range from mid-October into mid-December 2026. The full list of batch codes is available on Gerber’s website. [Photo: via FDA] Fast Company contacted Gerber to ask for more information about the arrowroot flour supplier. We will update this story if we get a reply. Impacted products should not be consumed Customers who have purchased the impacted product should not feed it to their child. They should return the product to the retailer where it was purchased for a refund. All-day consumer support is available by calling 1-800-4-GERBER (1-800-443-7237). Gerber is a subsidiary of Swiss multinational food giant Nestlé S.A.
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Journalist Ira Glass, who hosts the NPR show This American Life, is not a computer scientist. He doesnt work at Google, Apple, or Nvidia. But he does have a great ear for useful phrases, and in 2024, he organized an entire episode around one that might resonate with anyone who feels blindsided by the pace of AI development: Unprepared for what has already happened. Coined by science journalist Alex Steffen, the phrase captures the unsettling feeling that the experience and expertise youve built up may now be obsoleteor, at least, a lot less valuable than it once was. Whenever I lead workshops in law firms, government agencies, or nonprofit organizations, I hear that same concern. Highly educated, accomplished professionals worry whether there will be a place for them in an economy where generative AI can quicklyand relatively cheaplycomplete a growing list of tasks that an extremely large number of people currently get paid to do. Seeing a future that doesnt include you In technology reporter Cade Metzs 2022 book, Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World, he describes the panic that washed over a veteran researcher at Microsoft named Chris Brockett when Brockett first encountered an artificial intelligence program that could essentially perform everything hed spent decades learning how to master. Overcome by the thought that a piece of software had now made his entire skill set and knowledge base irrelevant, Brockett was actually rushed to the hospital because he thought he was having a heart attack. My 52-year-old body had one of those moments when I saw a future where I wasnt involved, he later told Metz. In his 2018 book, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, MIT physicist Max Tegmark expresses a similar anxiety. As technology keeps improving, will the rise of AI eventually eclipse those abilities that provide my current sense of self-worth and value on the job market? The answer to that question, unnervingly, can often feel outside of our individual control. Were seeing more AI-related products and advancements in a single day than we saw in a single year a decade ago, a Silicon Valley product manager told a reporter for Vanity Fair back in 2023. Things have only accelerated since then. Even Dario Amodeithe co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, the company that created the popular chatbot Claudehas been shaken by the increasing power of AI tools. I think of all the times when I wrote code, he said in an interview on the tech podcast Hard Fork. Its like a part of my identity that Im good at this. And then Im like, oh, my god, theres going to be these (AI) systems that [can perform a lot better than I can]. The irony that these fears live inside the brain of someone who leads one of the most important AI companies in the world is not lost on Amodei. Even as the one whos building these systems, he added, even as one of the ones who benefits most from (them), theres still something a bit threatening about (them). Autor and agency Yet as the labor economist David Autor has argued, we all have more agency over the future than we might think. In 2024, Autor was interviewed by Bloomberg News soon after publishing a research paper titled Applying AI to Rebuild Middle-Class Jobs. The paper explores the idea that AI, if managed well, might be able to help a larger set of people perform the kind of higher-valueand higher-payingdecision-making tasks currently arrogated to elite experts like doctors, lawyers, coders and educators. This shift, Autor suggests, would improve the quality of jobs for workers without college degrees, moderate earnings inequality, andakin to what the Industrial Revolution did for consumer goodslower the cost of key services such as healthcare, education and legal expertise. Its an interesting, hopeful argument, and Autor, who has spent decades studying the effects of automation and computerization on the workforce, has the intellectual heft to explain it without coming across as Pollyannish. But what I found most heartening about the interview was Autors response to a question about a type of AI doomerism that believes that widespread economic displacement is inevitable and theres nothing we can do to stop it. The future should not be treated as a forecasting or prediction exercise, he said. It should be treated as a design problembecause the future is not (something) where we just wait and see what happens. We have enormous control over the future in which we live, and [the quality of that future] depends on the investments and structures that we create today. At the starting line I try to emphasize Autors point about the future being more of a design problem than a prediction exercise in all the AI courses and workshops I teach to law students and lawyers, many of whom fret over their own job prospects. The nice thing about the current AI moment, I tell them, is that there is still time for deliberate action. Although the first scientific paper on neural networks was published all the way back in 1943, were still very much in the early stages of so-called generative AI. No student or employee is hopelessly behind. Nor is anyone commandingly ahead. Instead, each of us is in an enviable spot: right at the starting line. Patrick Barry is a clinical assistant professor of law and director of Digital Academic Initiatives at the University of Michigan. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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