Today TaxMama® wants to talk about deadlines, extensions, payments and dealing with it all on a tight budget. What do you do first?!
Dear Friends and Family,
I am hearing from a lot of people, tax pros as well as taxpayers, who are frantically trying to finish their tax returns by April 17th. The stress makes things worse – and people are making errors or finding themselves going around in circles, not getting their computations to work. What’s the best advice I can give you?
STOP!
Take a breath. If you slow down and take the time to gather all the correct information, from all the correct sources, instead of trying to estimate or make things up – it will all fall into place easily. That’s what extensions are for – to buy you some breathing space.
However, there is one group that does need to get off their butts and file NOW! April 17th is the absolute deadline to file the 2014 tax return and still collect a refund from the IRS. Over a BILLION dollars of 2014 withholding and estimated payments are sitting there, unclaimed – that will never be released to taxpayers after April 17th.
Back to all you folks who file annually.
You want an extension. It’s easy – use Form 4868 for personal extensions. Use Form 7004 to extend C corporation, gift tax returns and trust or estate tax returns. Most states will accept the IRS extension unless you owe money to the state. But make sure your state complies when there’s no balance due.
When you expect to owe money, but cannot pay it all, don’t lie on Form 4868. Enter the approximate balance you expect to owe. Pay at least $25 or $50 with the extension. (Never lie on the extension or it will be invalid.) When you use IRS’ Direct Pay to make a payment with your extension , you are also filing the extension.
If you absolutely cannot pay the whole balance due at this time I have some great tips for you – just read this week’s in-depth article – Last Minute Payments.
To make comments and toss in your own ideas, please drop into the TaxQuips Forum.
And remember, you can find answers to all kinds of questions about tax payments and other tax and business issues, free. Where? Where else? At www.TaxMama.com.
