The IRS is about to announce that tax filers get a longer timeline, according to Bloomberg News.
The normal deadline is April 15 but it will be pushed back until mid-May as a result of the pandemic, giving procrastinators and all of the taxpayers who have payments to make another month to get their returns completed and sent in, according to Bloomberg.
A number of lawmakers and tax groups, including the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), have been pressing the IRS to delay the deadline in light of the additional round of stimulus payment checks, which many have yet to receive.
The IRS began sending out the latest round of $1,400 checks to qualifying households over the weekend, in the midst of the current, abbreviated tax season that opened on Feb. 12.
In addition to a troubling backlog, the IRS is likely to receive more returns than it typically does because individuals must file a return in order to claim any economic impact payment money that they are entitled to, but did not receive automatically, the AICPA said.
Last year, the tax deadline was extended until July 15.
The AICPA issued a statement yesterday in response to critics who said tax laggards should just file extensions if they are uprepared to file returns or pay their tax bills. The trade group argued that even filing for an extension can create undue burdens on individuals and preparers.
“To claim there are no issues with retaining the April 15th filing and payment deadline does not reflect the taxpayers’ perspective,” the AICPA said in a statement. “We must not minimize or trivialize the hardships of taxpayers and tax professionals or the urgent need for deferment from an arduous filing environment.”
The IRS did not respond to Financial Advisor’s request for confirmation on the extension. Last month, however, the agency announced it was not planning to postpone the date.
The National Association of Tax Professionals and some lawmakers have also requested that the IRS provide an automatic tax-filing extension.
The agency also has a backlog of millions of individual and business returns that it has not yet processed from last year, the agency admitted several weeks ago.
On top of a shortened season and the need for people to include economic impact payments, many taxpayers are facing the filing challenge of filing in two state his year, and some might even face double taxation as a result of their remote work situation resulting from the pandemic, proponents of the IRS filing extension have noted.