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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.

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.

Due to many changes in the tax law under numerous tax acts that have been implemented over the past decade, including delay in the issuance of tax forms needed to complete individual income tax returns, the compression of the tax preparation and filing season has become even more severe. 

The tax code is long and complicated and oftentimes, taxpayers do not know what deductions or credits are available, which means they cannot take advantage of possible savings.

With so many changes under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the 2019 SECURE Act now in place, changes have been made regarding the deductibility of expenses that both business and individual taxpayers may not be aware of.

It’s the 4^th quarter. The holidays are right around the corner. The last thing you may want to think about is income taxes … but there are some compelling reasons why you should be thinking ahead.

Last year’s tax season saw the biggest change to the tax code in over 30 years. At the end of the tax season, we noted that one of the lessons learned was that individuals who engage us in tax planning early, on average, fared much better than those who did not. There are some very important reasons for this:

Ask the Expert: I recently moved. I set up mail forwarding with the U.S. Postal Service, is there anything else I need to do?

Setting up mail forwarding is a great start, but there are a couple more steps you should take:

Under a new provision created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), for the tax years 2018 and 2019 you may qualify for a tax credit if you set up or amend a paid-family leave program. Under Section 45S of the Internal Revenue Code, employers that voluntarily offer qualifying employees up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave annually under a written policy, may claim the credit.

The Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) has announced a proposal to provide Ohio employers with a $1.5B rebate.  This rebate comes as the result of stronger than expected returns on investments.

The Treasury Department and the IRS have issued guidance that provides a safe harbor for calculating depreciation deductions from passenger vehicles that qualify for the 100% additional first year depreciation deduction.