Regarding Extended Income Tax Returns
Throughout the Coronavirus pandemic, we’ve been active in our communication regarding changes to our office hours and the availability of our team, as well as to tax laws and stimulus programs that impact you, our client. Our last post was about the unique nature of this year’s filing season as we approached the May 17th deadline. If you haven’t yet read that post, please do so here.
For information related to advance payments of the Child Tax Credit, please click here.
One area of change in each of the last two tax seasons has been the due date of individual income tax returns. For 2019 tax returns (prepared in 2020), IRS imposed a July 15th deadline, and we needed every minute of additional time. For 2020 tax returns (prepared this year), IRS imposed a May 15th deadline, which was simply not enough time, given the changes and challenges unique to this filing season.
As deadlines have been shuffled and additional projects like the Paycheck Protection Program and the Employee Retention Tax Credit have been administered by our team, our calendars simply look vastly different than in a typical year. In addition, there are COVID-related items to be dealt with on 2020 tax returns that require extra consideration, which means we continue to work through things at a slower pace.
If we have had your 2020 tax information longer than normal without completing your return, we appreciate your patience and assure you we are working towards completion. Status updates from your preparer may not be available immediately, as many of our team members are only taking scheduled phone calls in order to create more time to finish projects.
At this time, our most important message for anyone whose income tax return is on extension is that we need your information as soon as possible. Extended partnership and S Corporation returns are due September 15th. Extended individual and C Corporation tax returns are due on October 15th. In order to ensure the timely completion of your return prior to its due date, we will require full information no later than six weeks prior to the due date of your return. If we do not receive your information that early, there is a chance your return may miss its deadline.
For September 15th returns, we will require all information by August 4th. For October 15th returns, we will require all information by September 3rd.
We understand this may be earlier than you anticipated providing your information, and we apologize for this inconvenience. However, by communicating this to you early, we trust that you'll be able to adjust.
We appreciate your continued patience and understanding as we continue to deal with the year's unique circumstances.
Respectfully,
Wilson Toellner CPA
