The Federal Tax Extension Deadline Is October 15

If you requested an extension on your 2011 income taxes, be sure to file your return before the October 15 deadline

Six months seems like a long time. That’s the trap lots of people fall into when they request a tax extension in April and then promptly forget about taxes until the October deadline when all tax returns need to be in to the IRS.

Well, here’s your fair warning: the tax filing extension deadline is less than a month away. That’s right, your tax return needs to be all taken care of by October 15 or else some bad stuff will start happening. What bad stuff exactly? Here’s the rundown:

• E-filing ends – That’s right, the last day to electronically file a return is October 15. After that everybody has to file a paper return, whether you requested an extension or not. E-filing, in case you didn’t know, is far superior to paper filing. Why? Because it’s easy – you don’t have to deal with pesky printers and post offices – and much faster – not only does your return not sit in the mail, but it gets processed by the IRS much faster. So what does this mean for you? A faster refund. Several weeks faster, as a matter of fact.
• Penalties and interest begin – If you requested an extension, you’ve been enjoying an extra six months to file without the burden of penalties or interest. But fail to file by October 15 and all that changes. Suddenly it becomes a lot more costly to procrastinate. Even if you didn’t request an extension, you should still file as soon as possible to minimize penalties and interest.

All of this amounts to a pretty compelling reason to file your 2011 tax return before October 15. But why wait until the last minute? You might as well go ahead and take care of it now.

PriorTax is just the place to file your return. We specialize in late taxes; dealing with extensions is something we do every day. Do you have un-filed returns from a tax year before 2011? Not a problem. You can and should file those as well.

PriorTax has a team of real live tax professionals standing by to assist you with any problems or questions that come up while you are preparing your tax return online. They are experienced experts who deal with late tax issues all the time. They can take the stress out of filing late taxes.

So get started now and file your 2011 tax return online, before it’s too late.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2012 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Tax Deadlines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.