Biden-Harris: What It Means | Apple's TikTok Problem | SoftBank's Comeback

Plus: Taxes, VPNs and Office Hours: The Ultimate Forbes Guide to Working from Home

Know Now

• Biden Picks Kamala Harris As VP: Democrats Unite, Harris’s Net Worth And What It Means
MORE: Trump Repeatedly Calls Harris ‘Nasty’ And ‘Horrible’ In WH Briefing

• As Beijing Pushes To Discuss ByteDance Ban In Trade Talks, White House Reportedly Explores Removing TikTok From App Stores

• U.S. To Buy 100 Million Doses Of Moderna Coronavirus Vaccine

• The U.K. Is Officially In Recession After Suffering The Worst Slump In Europe

• More Young People Are Dying Of Coronavirus In Florida, As State Shatters Death Record 

Top Take-Aways

At least 12 cities have cut funding from police department budgets or decreased officer numbers with several more in the process amid a national reckoning over systemic racism and police brutality, according to a Forbes tally. Seattle is the latest, joining the country’s two largest cities, New York and Los Angeles; plus Baltimore, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and six others.

Tesla is planning a five-for-one stock split, the first for the electric-car maker as a public company—a not entirely unexpected move given the rapid escalation in the share price and one that may push its market cap even higher. Tesla stock more than tripled in value from $413.13 at the end of 2019 to $1,474.05 in Tuesday’s after-hours trading.

Tech investor SoftBank Group reported a record net profit of $11.8 billion in the second quarter, thanks to the partial sale and merger of its stake in mobile carrier Sprint with T- Mobile and a recovery of its $100 billion Vision Fund, marking a return to profit after its worst year.

Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes will stand trial in March 2021 on charges she defrauded investors by claiming Theranos could perform tests with a single drop of blood, capping years of controversy surrounding one of Silicon Valley’s most dramatic downfalls.

The Big Ten Conference voted to cancel the fall football season due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with the Pac-12 following suit, which will likely set off a domino effect that may ultimately lead to the complete dissolution of the 2020 college football season.

Microsoft will release its newest console, the Xbox Series X, in November worldwide. But the console will launch without Halo Infinite, the highly anticipated next chapter in Microsoft's top video game franchise, which has been delayed to 2021.

Today's Must-Read

It’s very likely that you're reading this from your home—even if you're working. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread across the country, many of us are finding that the new normal means not leaving the house, or at least not for work anyway.

With big name companies extending work-from-home until the end of the year, next summer, or as an option, forever, ad hoc accommodations no longer seem sufficient—on either a personal or a tax policy level. Here’s the latest on the sometimes confusing must-knows and the dos and don’ts of work-from-home from our resident tax expert Kelly Phillips Erb.

You are not self-employed just because you are working from home. If you are receiving a paycheck from an employer, and those wages will be reported on a W-2, you are an employee. Why does it matter? As a result of the Tax Cuts And Jobs Act (TCJA), a.k.a., the Trump tax cuts, for the tax years 2018 - 2025, you cannot deduct home office expenses if you are an employee. 

If your employer doesn’t reimburse costs, your out-of-pocket expenses—from the cost of a large screen monitor to a fancy ergonomic chair—are not deductible for federal income tax purposes. But if your employer has already spent the money to buy them for you, ask if you can take them home. Simply relocating them to your house means everybody wins.

Does your employer offer you a monthly reimbursement for cell phone costs? Is there a stipend for home office expenses? Is there a discount for office supplies purchased through a particular vendor? If your costs are going up because you're working from home, ask your HR department if some money-saving measures may already be available.

Read the full report: The Ultimate Forbes Guide to Working from Home.

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