Can You File Tax Extension After the Deadline?
The tax season for 2023 taxes has officially ended. If you haven’t filed your taxes yet, you better have filed a tax extension. Otherwise, you might accumulate monetary penalties for paying and filing late.
Taxpayers that paid their taxes in full during the tax year don’t need to think about these, though. If you’re wondering whether or not you can file an extension after the deadline, but you paid all your tax liability, the answer to it is you don’t even need it. Taxpayers aren’t subject to any penalties for filing late if they paid the total taxes owed by the end of the tax year.
Filing an extension after the tax deadline
A tax extension is what gives you additional time to file your federal income tax return. The last day to file taxes was April 18, 2024, for 2023 taxes. With an extension, you get about six more months to file your tax return. Your new deadline to file becomes October 15.
While this is a lot of extra time to file a federal income tax return, you still need to pay taxes by the original deadline. If you don’t owe taxes, you don’t need to file an extension. This is only for taxpayers that are likely to owe the IRS but can’t file a tax return due to reasons of their own, such as not having the proper documentation to report their income.
As for filing an extension when you still owe taxes after the April 18 deadline, you can’t do it. It is as simple as that. Once you miss the deadline, you start accumulating penalties. For every month that you’re not up to your tax obligations, you pay a 0.5 percent penalty of the unpaid tax amount. This penalty adds up every month until it reaches 25 percent in total.
Can’t file due to missing tax documents
One of the most common reasons why taxpayers aren’t able to file their tax returns on time is due to missing documents. The income you earned isn’t reported from a single place if you didn’t earn your income from a single source.
This brings a problem of some payees not upholding their obligations. When a tax document isn’t filed and furnished to you that is supposed to report the income you earned, sometimes, your hands are tied. There are some exceptions to this, though. For example, employees that haven’t received their W-2s can file a 4852 Form instead and report their wages themselves.
While the above example is also an option with certain other tax forms, it’s best to contact the payee and ask them about your tax documents. The more they don’t file, the more penalties they stockpile also. For this reason, it will be in their best interest to file the necessary tax documents.
