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The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants recently asked Congress to extend the Paycheck Protection Program’s March 31 application deadline at least 60 days. Additionally, the AICPA also asked the IRS and the Department of the Treasury to extend the April 15 tax filing and payment deadline to June 15.

The PATH Act accelerated the due date for filing Form 1099 that includes nonemployee compensation (NEC) from February 28 to January 31 and eliminated the automatic 30-day extension for forms that include NEC. Starting with tax year 2020, taxpayers should use Form 1099-NEC to report nonemployee compensation.

Form 1099-NEC replaces the use of box 7 on Form 1099-MISC from previous years. Other uses of 1099-MISC have not changed and will continue to be used for common payments such as rent and payments to an attorney.

Over the past few weeks, we have received dozens of calls from clients, who have received tax notices from both the Internal Revenue Service and the State of Ohio.

The pandemic is not stopping Ohio’s observation of its annual sales tax holiday.

The event kicks off on midnight on Aug. 7 and lasts until Aug. 9 at 11:59 p.m.

During the “holiday,” the following items are exempt from sales and use tax:

On March 18, the Internal Revenue Service provided clarification to special payment relief for individuals and businesses in response to the COVID-19 Outbreak.

For individual returns, income tax payment deadlines with a due date of April 15, 2020, are automatically extended until July 15, 2020, for up to $1 million of their 2019 tax due.

This payment relief applies to all individual returns, including self-employed individuals, and all entities other than C-Corporations, such as trusts or estates. The IRS will automatically provide this relief to taxpayers. Taxpayers do not need to file any additional forms or call the IRS to qualify for this relief.

Tax Deadline Remains April 15

While taxpayers still have to file their taxes by April 15, 2020, the deadline to pay taxes has been extended by 90 days until July 15, 2020.

During a March 17th press conference regarding the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced taxpayers will have an additional 90-days through July 15, 2020 to pay their taxes, penalty-free and interest-free. 

He said individual taxpayers can defer up to $1 million of tax payments and corporations up to $10 million in tax payments.

Zinner & Co. is proud to introduce our new 2020 tax season interns. We hope this snapshot of them will help you get to know them, as some of our clients will be receiving communications from our interns, as they will work on tax returns this season. 

One of the most common tax-related misconceptions is that filing a tax extension increases your risk of a tax audit. 

This longstanding myth is simply not true, as filing a tax extension can statistically decrease the risk of an audit.

In addition to statistically decreasing the risk of an audit, there is also one other benefit to extending a tax return.

Many individuals may think the time to plan for tax season occurs during the tax season, which occurs after their tax year has ended.

Unfortunately, this is often too late to make any adjustments, which may have benefited the taxpayer.  

Similarly, businesses can also fall into this line of thinking and fail to plan for tax season during their tax year.

The IRS announced this week in IRS Notice 2019-11 that it would not penalize taxpayers whose tax withholding and estimated tax payments fell short last year due to failing to change their withholding under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).