America gets a new tax deadline

And more of the week's best financial insight

Taxes.
(Image credit: Pra-chid/iStock)

Here are three of the week's top pieces of financial insight, gathered from around the web:

A break on loan payments

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Price gouging surges nationwide

Consumer watchdogs nationwide have received more than 5,000 reports about price gouging and other scams from merchants, said Reese Dunklin and Justin Pritchard at The Asso­ciated Press, with "hundreds more arriving daily." That doesn't even include California, which has not released the state's complaints data. A store in Tennessee was found by authorities to be charging $1 for a squirt of hand sanitizer, while in Maine, a convenience store was selling toilet paper for $10 a roll. Pennsylvania "created an email address dedicated to complaints," and Oregon launched a "price-gouging hotline." Michigan's attorney general issued a cease-and-desist letter to the home improvement chain Menard's, which was accused of "doubling the price of a gallon of Clorox bleach to $8.99 and offering 3M respirator masks for an 'everyday low price' of $39.95 a pair — more than four times what Home Depot advertised."

New July 15 tax deadline

"Americans will have an additional three months to file their taxes amid the corona­virus pandemic," said Kevin Liptak at CNN​. Last week the Treasury Department set a July 15 deadline for both filing and payments. However, the U.S. said that tax refunds will still be sent out normally, so if you expect to get one, you're still encouraged to file as early as possible. Also, so far the rule "applies to federal tax income payments only." State extensions may vary; California, for instance, has extended its state deadlines to June 15.

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