Tax Guru – Ker$tetter Letter

After a lot of speculation that the official Tax Day for 2019 income tax returns would be moved out to September 15 or October 15, IRS ended the confusion with a news release.

Taxpayers should file by July 15 tax deadline; automatic extension to Oct. 15 available

The big difference between having IRS just push the Tax Day to October 15 versus us filing the 4868, is when any expected tax balances need to be submitted to IRS and the States.  IRS pushing Tax Day to 10/15 would have meant that no form would need to be filed by July 15 and no money would have to be sent in until Oct 15.

I had actually been expecting the additional delay, not just for the hassles of getting everything together to prepare 2019 tax returns by July 15, but also for the fact that allowing people to hold onto their 2019 and 2020 tax payments until October 15 would have been a much more efficient method of providing economic stimulus money to people than the previous method was.  Of course, this is SOP for government operations, to choose the least efficient method of doing things

Most State tax agencies have been piggy-backing on the IRS deadline, so extensions should be filed with them as well. Check your states’ websites to be better informed.  As of today, I notice that the AICPA’s chart of State tax filing dates hasn’t been updated since 6/18/20.  Hopefully, that will be amended soon to take into account the various States’ conformity or not with IRS’s declaration.

I am a little disappointed that Tax Day wasn’t moved until later, but I am grateful that at least IRS didn’t wait until July 14 to spring this announcement on us.  That gives us two weeks to do rough calculations of 2019 taxes and prepare the extension forms.