katleho SeisaThe new year is just over a week old, but it’s almost time to get cracking on those 2019 tax returns. Proactive taxpayers can start submitting last year’s tax returns to the IRS as early as Jan. 27. As always, you have until April 15 to file your 2019 tax return. The IRS predicts it will receive about 150 million individual income tax returns this season. Here’s one reason to get started early: Scammers who make off with your Social Security number may rush to file fraudulent return

Search engines like Seznam, from the Czech Republic, Russia’s Yandex and France’s Qwant will also appear in some markets. These options will be in effect from March 1 to June 30 and new auctions will occur quarterly, Google said. A minimum bid was set for each country and the three highest bidders for each market will appear during setup on Android phones in that country. In a blog post explaining the rules, Google called the auction, “a fair and objective method.” The auction drew criticism fro

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., arrives for a meeting of the House Democratic Caucus in the Capitol on Wednesday, December 4, 2019. If the speaker thinks withholding the articles will “help force a fair trial in the Senate,” Smith added, “then I wholeheartedly support that decision.” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Smith quickly reversed himself Thursday after saying Speaker Nancy Pelosi should send the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is pushing to delay a proposed disclosure of Secret Service spending on presidential travel until after the 2020 election, a spokesperson for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Thursday. A Treasury Department spokesperson said in a statement that Mnuchin and Secret Service Director James Murray have been working over “the past several months” to return the Secret Service to the Treasury Department. “Conversations about the return of the Secret Service to the

Amazon’s Ring said it fired four employees for watching customer video feeds beyond what they were allowed to. Brian Huseman, Amazon’s vice president of public policy, said in the company’s response to the lawmakers that there had been four complaints over the last four years about its employees’ access to Ring video data. Huseman said in Amazon’s response that teams in Ukraine can only access publicly available videos and videos from Ring employees, contractors and friends, only after receiving

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is slated to hold her weekly news conference on Capitol Hill on Thursday morning, as some Democratic colleagues urge her to move articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate so the trial can begin. Pelosi has yet to deliver the impeachment articles to the Senate in an effort to force Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to ensure what she has called a fair process. But McConnell and other Republican leaders have indicated they will set the imp

Construction begins along the U.S. border with Mexico where the new border wall will replace old fencing on August 23, 2019 in Calexico, CA. A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s border wall project can proceed while using up to $3.6 billion earmarked for military construction projects while the Trump administration continues challenging a lower federal court’s injunction against diversion of the funds for that purpose. A final ruling on the legality of the use of

Independent Sen. Angus King told CNBC on Thursday that while the Trump administration made a good argument for killing Iran’s top general, the timing is still questionable. But King said he wonders what led the Trump administration to suddenly kill Soleimani, whom the U.S. had pursued for decades. “We would be having a very different discussion right now if the Iranian missiles had killed Americans,” King said. King told CNBC that he understood the argument Lee was making, saying that stopping d

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she will not rush to deliver two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate. That may be soon,” Pelosi told reporters, revealing no signs that she planned to end her 3-week-long effort to negotiate with the Republican-controlled chamber over the rules of Trump’s impeachment trial. Following the articles’ passage, Pelosi said she planned to hold them until McConnell assured her he would conduct what Democrats called ”

Joe Biden is on the verge of picking up a key fundraiser who was Sen. Kamala Harris’ national finance chairman when she was running for the White House. Henes would be the latest former Harris financier to come over to Biden as the former vice president looks to capture the Democratic nomination. Beyond previous Harris backers, Biden has captured many other wealthy fundraisers who were helping former primary candidates. Wall Street titan Mark Gallogly has decided to support Biden after assisting

“It’s certainly a valid option,” said certified financial planner Ronald Myers, a managing member at Fortune 360 Group in Plantation, Florida. Basically, in exchange for guaranteed income over a set period of time (or for your lifetime), you give an insurance company a lump sum, which in turn becomes part of the insurer’s pooled investments. “All you’re left with is an income stream,” said David Mendels, a CFP and director of planning at Creative Financial Concepts in New York. This was so he co

Apple’s iPhone sales in China rose more than 18% last month, according to CNBC calculations using government data published by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a government think tank. The news drove Apple stock up more than 2% Thursday, bringing the stock to a fresh all-time intraday high of $310.01, according to FactSet. Apple shipped 3.2 million iPhones in China through December, according to the data, and that figure was up from 2.7 million units shipped in Dec

Barclays upgraded its rating on Starbucks stock to overweight from neutral on Thursday and told clients that the coffee chain’s focus on menu innovation and the customer experience could lead to big gains in 2020. Analyst Jeffrey Bernstein highlighted Starbucks’s recent initiatives to improve employee-customer interaction as well as popular drink options like the Nitro Cold Brew platform and a rising number of digital sales. Those changes have led to better comparable sales, or “comps,” an indus

Shares of Goldman Sachs climbed on Thursday after two firms upgraded the bank’s stock on the belief it is cheap and will benefit from a rebounding global economy. Bank of America upgraded Goldman Sachs to buy from neutral on Thursday, while hiking its 12-month price target on the stock to $270 from $245. The new target would translated into a 14% gain for the stock, based on its Wednesday’s close of $237.76. The brokerage firm upped its ratings on Goldman to buy from neutral, citing reduced macr

Two Wall Street firms lowered their ratings on Tesla, backing away from Elon Musk’s electric automaker after its recent swift share climb. Baird downgraded Tesla to neutral from outperform on Thursday before the bell, while CFRA downgraded Tesla to sell from hold after the bell Wednesday. “We have become incrementally cautious on the stock, given its huge recent surge in price,” Sacconaghi said in a note to investors Thursday. In heavy trading Thursday, Tesla shares swung up as much as up 1%, ne

Coca-Cola has transformed into a better business that’s growing faster with more cash on hand than ever, according to Credit Suisse. The firm upgraded shares of Coca-Cola to outperform from neutral and raised its price target to $64 per share, near 20% upside to Wednesday’s closing price of $54.35 per share. The upgrade sent shares of Coca-Cola up more than 1.2% in on Thursday. Since James Quincey became CEO of the company in May of 2017, shares of Coca-Cola have risen about 26%. Quincey has spu

Shares of Virgin Galactic rose 4.5% in trading from its previous close of $11.42. But Virgin Galactic froze ticket sales after a crash in 2014 killed a pilot during a test flight. Virgin Galactic said in its third-quarter results that – following those test flights – the company received 3,557 expressions of interest in flight reservations. Before that happens Virgin Galactic will move its spacecraft Unity to the company’s spaceport in New Mexico from its testing facility in Mojave, California.

Like a savings account or individual retirement account (IRA), a 401(k) itself is simply a type of financial account. Pick your investmentsOnce you start contributing money to a 401(k), you then have to choose investments. No matter how many funds you’re offered, you’ll need to do a bit of research before you make your selections. One way to assess each fund you’re offered is to search its name via Morningstar, an investment research firm. “Costs really matter in investments,” investing icon War

UK travel agency Ocean Florida is looking to hire someone to be a theme park tester throughout Florida. The company will pay £3,000 (about $3,930) for the tester to spend three “magical weeks” exploring Orlando, Florida’s theme parks during April or May, according to the job listing, including Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and the SeaWorld Parks, among others. The chosen tester will have the option to bring a friend, with travel costs and accommodations covered by the company for both. In

“I was a good student, but my memory was average,” Dellis, 35, tells CNBC Make It. Dellis scoured the internet looking for tips to improve his memory and joined a few forums where professional “memory athletes” (people who train their memory skills for high performance) chatted about different memory techniques. Then he listened to “Quantum Memory: Learn to Improve Your Memory with The World Memory Champion,” an audiobook by Dominic O’Brien, a seven-time world memory champion. Today Dellis, auth