With less than one month until the deadline to file income taxes, there are two noticeable changes that came from last year’s federal legislation.

Certified Public Accountant with Hankel and Associates Tom Kennedy says one of the changes from the Big, Beautiful Bill was removing income taxes on overtime pay. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio that if your job qualifies and you receive overtime pay, there are no taxes on that for 2025.

“It’ll be on your W2. It’ll report it in your boxes like normal and then I think there’s going to be a box 12 on there that tells you the amount of overtime. But it’ll be a deduction, you won’t pay tax on that. That’s good. That’s $12,500 per person or $25,000 for married filing jointly.”    

Kennedy points out the other major change was eliminating taxes on tips from the first $25,000 of income.

“You need to keep track of what you got as tips and especially if you’re self-employed and you get tips, that’s something that won’t be taxable. It is subject to Social Security but not subject to income tax.”

Kennedy adds that for individuals that fall into either of these new categories, to make sure to double check W2 forms to see if those are separated out before filing income tax returns. The deadline to file federal income taxes is April 15th and state income taxes is April 30th.