Taxpayers race to file by midnight
Tax day is upon us, and that means millions of Americans are rushing to get their tax returns filed or extended before midnight.
The Internal Revenue Service had received just over 101 million returns as of April 5, but the agency expects more than 128.7 million individual tax returns to be filed by the deadline.
That leaves a lot coming down to the wire.
“Doing taxes late is how I get back at the government,” X user @LaVendrickS posted Monday. “Or at least that’s what I tell myself to justify my natural inclination to procrastinate and be late to things.”
“I procrastinate on everything. Why exclude taxes?” wrote X user @mglev_eth.
Tax preparers across the country reported that this tax season has had far fewer hiccups than in previous years. One notable improvement: actually getting through to an IRS representative on the phone.
Most of that recovery, the US Treasury notes, is due to the tax agency’s $80 billion boost in funding from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The cash was used to target problem areas in the agency, mainly to bolster hiring, revamp phone services, and deliver a smooth direct filing experience.
Still, Monday was an all-hands-on-deck effort.
“On a day like today, April 15, we might see a million returns come in every hour,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said Monday on CNBC.
Read more: Tax day is here. What you need to know to file before the deadline.
St. Louis, Missouri: ‘This year was different’
Last year, tax filers and preparers had to wait hours on the phone to get through to the IRS. This year was different.
The federal agency’s callback performance for phone inquiries on its main taxpayer helpline hit 88% this tax season, exceeding its 85% target. Prior to receiving additional funding, the IRS had only achieved a 15% score.
Call wait times were cut down from almost 30 minutes to just three minutes. This year, the IRS expanded its customer callback option, making it readily available to 97% of eligible taxpayers at the beginning of the call if the wait time was longer than 15 minutes.
The initiative collectively saved taxpayers 1.4 million hours of time on hold, the US Treasury reported.
Hours that last year — at times — amounted to no help at all.
“Last year was frustrating. You’re sitting on the phone, and then it disconnects, or something happens. You’re just left infuriatingly mad at no one,” Rus Garofalo, president of Brass Taxes in St. Louis, Mo., told Yahoo Finance. “This year was different, it felt smoother.”
Just last week, Garofalo had to make a call to the IRS through the tax preparers hotline, and the experience was less taxing overall.
“I just got on a callback list, which is a huge difference,” he said. “I was like, ‘cool, I can work with that.’ They said they would call me back in 62 minutes, and I was able to just go about my day instead of being hours on the phone.”
Overall, the IRS answered more than 1 million more calls than the 2023 filing season through the week ending April 6, and nearly 3 million more compared to the 2022 filing season.
New York, New York: ‘Not afraid to say no’ to last-minute filers
If you’re not going to make it on tax day, your deadline to file an extension is also today.
The IRS estimates that 19 million taxpayers will file for an automatic extension by the tax deadline. Tax preparers across the country were anticipating a new wave of extensions to be filed today.
Last year, Garofalo filed 732 tax extensions throughout the entire season. This year, even more people are racing to submit a form to get some extra time to file.
“I expect we’ll probably get a couple hundred more just today,” he told Yahoo Finance on Monday morning. “Right now, we’re up to 882.”
In Manhattan, Ramona Cedeño, said 40% of her clients had filed an automatic extension, many of them weeks ago because they knew they wouldn’t meet the deadline.
The founder and CEO of FiBrick said her team has been filing extensions for the last two weeks.
“Any new clients that have come to us in the last two weeks will be an extension,” she said. “We will not start your return in April. We want the best for our clients, allowing sufficient time for the work to be done well.”
While an extension buys you time — until Oct. 15 — to file your return, it does not give you any extension to pay your taxes.
The IRS said those who don’t file on time will face a Failure to File penalty, which is calculated based on how late their return is and the amount of unpaid tax as of the original due date.
If you owe taxes and don’t pay by the deadline, you’ll also be hit by a Failure to Pay penalty. To avoid penalties and late fees, taxpayers who owe should pay their entire tax bill (or as much as they can afford) by midnight.
There are tools that can help you calculate the amount you owe on taxes.
As for Garofalo’s team, they had to limit how many last-minute extensions they could file.
“We do have boundaries and have worked on that in the last few years,” he said. “We built a robust process of getting extensions, a big challenge for us because most of our clients have fairly complicated taxes.”
Cedeño’s team, who works mainly with business owners, wasn’t accepting any last-minute automatic extensions from new clients today.
“We are not afraid to say no, as long as we’re trying to do what’s best for them,” she said.
New York, New York: ‘IRA contribution deadline is today’
Eric Bronnenkant, CPA and head of tax at financial services company Betterment, was helping clients with questions about IRA contributions and brokerage statements.
Taxpayers have until midnight (April 15) to get a tax deduction by putting money into an IRA for 2023. The total amount eligible for deduction depends on your income, and the contribution is limited to $6,500 ($7,500 if you are age 50 or older).
You can fund your retirement accounts through cash, checks, or a direct transfer from the bank. Of the three, electronic transfers are the fastest and safest way to make a payment. Both bank wire and automated clearing house (ACH) can help with electronic fund transfers, but while wire is instantaneous, ACH can take a couple of days to clear.
Regardless of which method you choose, Bronnenkant said as long as taxpayers start the contribution process by the end of the day, Betterment accepts it as a contribution made on time.
Houston, Texas: ‘Your procrastination does not make an emergency on my situation’
Grant Dougherty, enrolled agent and founder of Dougherty Tax Solution, was filing an extension for a new client who hired him today. Dougherty normally doesn’t take on new customers on the day of the tax deadline, but this one worked out.
“It’s a guy I’ve been chatting with for a while,” Dougherty said. “I had been expecting him to sign up.”
Yet, unless you have been communicating with your accountant and expect to make a tax payment, Dougherty said taxpayers should avoid paying or doing taxes on the day of the deadline or even the days leading up to the deadline.
Rushing on tax returns can lead to unnecessary errors that can reduce refunds and credits.
“There’s a time crunch, and rushing on something like a tax return is not OK,” Dougherty said.
It’s also a burden for tax professionals when clients procrastinate. Given how busy tax season can get, Dougherty often has no choice but to waitlist customers who delay providing information or answering questions.
“Your procrastination does not make an emergency in my situation,” Dougherty said. “There can be a lot of unreasonable expectations around this time of the year.”
Still, procrastination is not uncommon. Nearly one-third of 2022 tax returns were submitted two weeks before the deadline, IRS tax filing data shows.
Gabriella Cruz-Martinez is a personal finance and housing reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X @__gabriellacruz. Rebecca Chen is a reporter for Yahoo Finance and previously worked as an investment tax certified public accountant (CPA).
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