Dad Joke
What did one plate say to the other plate?
Dinner is on me.
Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile
About $160 billion in tariff money is being refunded right now. You paid a chunk of it, and you can’t have any of it back.
Here’s the part nobody put in a headline you’d notice.
In February the Supreme Court ruled 6–3, in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, that the emergency-powers law the tariffs were built on never authorized tariffs in the first place. The law lets a president regulate imports in an emergency. The Court said regulating isn’t taxing, and Congress never wrote taxing into that particular statute. So the tariffs weren’t just repealed going forward — they were unlawful from the day they were imposed.
Which means the money has to go back. Somewhere around $160 billion of it.
Now follow where it goes, because this is the whole thing. A tariff is paid at the border by the importer of record — the American company bringing the goods in. Not the foreign factory, not you. That company then decides how much of the cost to move into its shelf prices, and mostly it moved all of it. Customs built a refund system this spring called CAPE to pay the money back, and CAPE pays exactly one party: the importer of record.
So the refunds are real and they are landing. CNN, reporting the companies’ own disclosures, lists Walmart at about $2.9 billion, Apple around $2.2 billion, Ford at $1.3 billion, Target at $994 million, Home Depot at $730 million, Nike at $684 million and Amazon at $640 million.
And you, who actually paid it at the register, have no claim form. There isn’t one. I want to be very clear about that, because I’d rather tell you nothing is coming than let you spend a Saturday looking for a portal that doesn’t exist. Estimates cited across the coverage put the average household’s tariff cost for 2025–26 at roughly $1,700, and put the share of refund money expected to reach consumers in any form at about 15 to 20 percent.
There is a lawsuit trying to force the issue. Cavallaro v. Target, filed in July in the Southern District of New York, alleges Target raised prices on tariffed and untariffed goods, is collecting a government refund as the importer, and has returned none of it to the people who funded the increase. It’s one of more than eighty suits like it. Every word of that is an allegation. No court has found Target liable, and I wouldn’t plan around it.
If you know somebody who spent the last two years angry about prices and assuming that was just how it is now — send them this one. They paid into this. The refund is real, it’s being paid out this month, and nobody is going to write to them about it.
The useful half: some of it is coming back, just not evenly
This is the part you can actually act on, because it’s a shopping decision rather than a claim.
A few retailers are pushing the refund straight back into prices. CNBC reports that Walmart put its $2.9 billion into cuts on about 11,000 items, ground beef among them. Burlington got $55 million and says every dollar of it goes into lower prices — roughly 40% this quarter, 60% next. Their CEO, Michael O’Sullivan, said it plainly: rather than take “a one-time boost to earnings,” they intend to “fully invest these refunds back,” pointing at moderate- and lower-income families who’ve struggled with the cost of living. The cosmetics company e.l.f. took about $50 million and cut prices permanently on roughly a tenth of its catalog.
Lowe’s got $80 million and did not put it into prices. It went to margins.
I’m not telling you to boycott anybody. I’m telling you that “everything costs more now” has stopped being uniformly true in the last three weeks, and the companies that are handing it back are saying so out loud on earnings calls. It’s worth knowing which is which before a big purchase.
While we’re on invisible costs: the FTC says Amazon ran one on its own sellers
Yesterday the FTC and twenty-two state attorneys general sued Amazon in federal court in Washington State.
The allegation is specific and, if you’ve ever run an auction of any kind, kind of breathtaking. According to the complaint, advertisers were told the ad auctions were “second price” — you win, you pay a penny more than the next-highest bidder. The FTC alleges that for seven years the actual charge exceeded the winning bid in nearly 80% of cases, and that the surcharge was leaned on hardest around Prime Day and Black Friday. It quotes internal 2024 notes from Amazon’s own ads chief and chief digital economist describing it as a “clever non-transparent way to charge first price” that was “incredibly effective,” and other documents warning that disclosing it would do “irrevocable damage to advertiser trust.”
Allegations, all of it. Nothing is proven, and the company gets to answer in court.
Why it’s in a household newsletter: the complaint says this hit more than a million advertisers, over 500,000 of them small and medium businesses. Iowa’s attorney general made the connection out loud — if a small business’s costs go up, it passes them to the customer, so Iowans shopping there were overpaying too. That’s the mechanism. It’s one hop, but it’s a real hop.
If you’re behind on filing taxes, something changed this year and nobody announced it
The Treasury’s tax watchdog published its annual compliance report yesterday, and one number in it is worth your attention.
In fiscal 2023 the IRS sent zero automated notices to individual non-filers. In fiscal 2025 it sent about 3.2 million. That’s not a policy announcement; it’s a machine that was switched back on.
Meanwhile the enforcement that gets talked about went the other way. The IRS lost roughly 27% of its examination and collection staff in a single year, exams opened on individual returns fell 30%, and exams on people earning over $400,000 fell 27%. Total enforcement revenue slipped from $98.7 billion to $93.8 billion. But collection revenue rose 17%, and the report attributes that mainly to the notices restarting. The report is here if you want it.
So: fewer audits of large incomes, far more automated letters to ordinary people who stopped filing. If that’s you, the useful thing is that an unfiled return is a much smaller problem than an ignored notice, and it is nearly always cheaper to walk in the door than to be found. Filing late is not a crime you get arrested for. It’s a bill with penalties that stop growing once you engage.
Two minutes, and one of these is a genuine danger
Four recalls worth checking against your own house.
Goal Zero YETI 3000X portable power stations — the circuit board can overheat and start a fire. The fix is a free firmware update through the app. If you bought one for storm season, do this before storm season.
Koorlian mattresses — they fail the federal flammability standard. The remedy is a free cover that brings them into compliance.
JINHEZO mini LED tea lights — the button batteries are reachable. A swallowed button battery burns through a child’s esophagus in hours. Full refund with proof you’ve disposed of them. If you have small children and these are in the house, this is the one to do first.
Cuisinart grill brushes — Conair expanded the recall; over 3.6 million are now covered. Bristles come loose and end up in food.
“Clean background check required” is a rejection letter in disguise
Maryland’s attorney general settled a case yesterday with a property manager over exactly that phrase in rental ads. His civil rights division found reasonable cause to believe the wording had a discriminatory effect, and his line about it is the best sentence I read all week: it “tells people not to bother before they’ve even applied.”
The company pays $30,000, strips the language, has to do individualized assessment instead of a blanket screen, and has to offer notice and an application-fee waiver to certain people it turned down. Maryland’s Fair Chance Housing Act then takes effect October 1.
That’s one state and one company. I’m including it because the pattern is national: a lot of people read that phrase in a listing and never apply, and the number of applications a screening rule quietly prevents never shows up in anyone’s statistics.
What I published on the site
My Paycheck Is Being Garnished for a Defaulted Student Loan. Here’s What to Do
Your Creditors Aren’t Judging You. They’re Running a Model — So Should You.
Damon Day Made $565 Driving New Year’s Eve. In 2023, It Was $1,000.
One more thing
If you want the longer version of any of this, the Weekday Briefing is where I take one thing at a time instead of six things quickly. The podcast is there too, if you’d rather listen than read. And if somebody forwarded you this and you’d like your own copy, the subscribe button is right here.
I’m not an attorney, and none of this is legal advice for your situation. Every figure and quote above links to where it came from, and I’d rather you clicked through than took my word for it. The Target and Amazon matters are allegations in filed complaints — no court has found anybody liable, and both companies get their say.
Something struck me putting today together. The single biggest money story on this page is $160 billion moving from a government back to companies, over a cost that you paid, through a process built so that you specifically cannot touch it. That’s not a scandal. Nobody hid it. It’s just how the plumbing was laid, and the plumbing was laid by people who were not thinking about you.
That’s most of what I do here — read the plumbing and tell you where it runs. It’s not glamorous and it doesn’t make anybody rich. But knowing that a refund exists and isn’t coming to you is worth something real: it’s an afternoon you don’t waste, and it’s one less thing you blame yourself for. You didn’t miss a form. There was never a form.
Back tomorrow.
— Steve
Bonus Section
A few places I actually use, and what I get out of telling you. Each one shows a plain link and my referral link. If you use mine, the company may hand us both a small bonus. The plain link goes to exactly the same place — it just pays me nothing, and you nothing. Use whichever you like; genuinely, it’s your call.
I’ve also listed places I like that pay me nothing at all, so you can see the difference.
Cash that actually earns something
Betterment — their Cash Reserve account is the closest thing here to a plain high-yield savings account. (my referral link)
Robinhood’s cash sweep pays competitively too. The good rate sits behind their paid Gold tier — I pay for it myself — so on a small balance the subscription can eat the gain. It’s under Investing below. Do the arithmetic before you subscribe.
And one where nobody pays anybody: TreasuryDirect is the government’s own site. You buy Treasury bills straight from the Treasury with no broker in the middle — $100 minimum, in $100 increments, terms from four weeks out to a year. There is no app, no bonus and no referral link in existence for it. I mention it because for money you know you won’t touch for a few months, it’s usually the honest number the others have to beat.
Saving without having to think about it
Acorns — rounds up your spare change and invests it automatically. I pay for it, and the reason is simple: it saves money I’d otherwise spend without noticing. (my referral link)
And the version that costs nobody anything, me included: a standing transfer out of checking on payday, at the bank you already have. Acorns works because it moves the money before you notice it; a transfer you set once and forget does the same thing. If you’d rather not open another account, do that instead — I’d genuinely rather you saved something than used my link.
Investing
Robinhood — the platform I run my own experiment on. Uninvested cash is swept to FDIC-insured program banks, so it doubles as a cash account. The competitive rate requires their paid Gold subscription, which I pay for myself — worth it at my balance, but do the arithmetic on yours. And note Robinhood doesn’t pay that interest itself; the program banks do. (my referral link)
And three I recommend on merit, where I get nothing at all: Vanguard for low-cost index funds, Schwab for a full-service brokerage, and American Century — I was a happy customer there for decades.
Rates and terms move, and each of these has its own conditions. Go look at today’s numbers before you move a dollar.
A free conversation about your situation
Damon Day is an independent debt coach, and my co-host on Get Out of Debt Guy — you can also hear us on Spotify. I want you to know that before you decide anything. I receive no payment for this referral.
The consultation is free. The only time money changes hands is if you decide you want to hire him as a consultant. Go to DamonDay.com and schedule — he doesn’t cold-call anybody, and neither do I.
Or ask me, anonymously
Ask Steve — free, private, and I’m not selling anything. No account, no email, no sales pitch at the end of it.