On March 21, the Treasury Department and the IRS announced that the federal income filing due date is automatically extended from April 15 to July 15, 2020. Taxpayers can also defer federal tax payments that were originally due on April 15 to the new deadline of July 15, meaning if you owed money to the IRS for your 2019 tax return then you’ll have a few extra months to make that payment to them without penalties and interest regardless of the amount owed. This also means that since the deadline has been pushed back to the middle of summer the need to file extensions for clients this season will primarily be for clients that we have not received their documents by July 1st or we need additional time to process all the returns that we have received. Clients wishing to make contributions to IRAs for 2019 also now can extend this date to July as well.
Many states are now shifting their filing deadline to match the IRS…but not all. The following is a current list that has pushed back their filing deadline and payment relief to July 15: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
These states are NOT adhering to the July 15 change and are off doing their own thing…
- Hawaii – 2019 Income tax filing and payment deadline extended to July 20, 2020.
- Idaho – Has extended its income tax filing and payments deadlines to June 15.
- Mississippi – The deadline to file and pay the 2019 individual income tax and corporate tax is extended until May 15, 2020.
- Virginia – Payments due by May 1 have now been extended to June 1. Meaning your payment to Virginia is due by June 1 to avoid any PENALTIES. If you don’t pay by May 1 then INTEREST will begin accruing and can not be waived as it is required by law.
The Senate has passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), a $2 Trillion coronavirus stimulus bill. The stimulus package, which will now go to the House for passage, currently includes a recovery rebate in the form of a refundable tax credit. If passed, the credit could mean up to $1,200 for individuals and $2,400 for joint taxpayers, plus $500 for qualifying children.
Our office is still closed to the public and will be for the foreseeable future. If you have an appointment for after April 15th please begin gathering your documents now and getting them ready to send to us. You may deliver them to us by mail or portal. We will do our best to process them as quickly as we can but please note that as a safety precaution we are quarantining all postal mail for three days to ensure that any possibility of contamination is neutralized.
As we are no longer seeing clients we are shifting our hours of operation to a more off-season schedule. As we are home working we have set our phones to go directly to voicemail. You can still leave us a message and we will return the call as soon as we can.