File Past Year Tax Returns: Try it Online for Free!

Filing past year tax returns aren’t fun — and it isn’t supposed to be!

The IRS has designed the process so that the average taxpayer will strongly prefer filing on the due date. While that’s fine as a way to encourage people to file early, it’s not such a great way to get people to file once the deadline has passed. Fortunately, it’s possible to prepare your tax return online — and you can even start for free, and only complete the filing once you know what you’re getting!

So what, exactly, does the IRS do to make filing late taxes a pain? There are a couple techniques they’ve perfected:

1. Fines, fees, and all that: If you didn’t submit your return, you’ll owe fines based on the amount of taxes you owe. You may also owe straight dollar-mount fines.
2. Interest: On top of those fines, you’ll have to pay interest, at an above-market rate! This can start to stack up fast, especially if you let it compound.
3. Paper filings, only: Adding insult to injury, even though we’re in the digital age (you’re reading this on a computer screen, right?), you still have to file past year tax returns on paper.

But there’s a way around that one! Even though you have to file past year tax returns by printing up a document, nothing will stop you from preparing your past year tax returns online, printing them up and filing.

In fact, not only will nothing stop you, but you can get a great deal while you’re at it! How?

It’s simple: since nobody likes the “sticker shock” of owing a tax preparation fee for filing a late tax return that cost them more than they expected, some sites that help people file past year tax returns also offer free return preparation until the filing happens.

In other words, you can prepare the information, figure out exactly what you owe and whether or not you can pay it, and only then will you have to pay to file past year tax returns. And you’ll probably find that you owe less than you think! Late filers are generally more likely to get a refund, and their refunds tend to be larger.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 9th, 2013 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Taxes for Prior Years. 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.