Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin appeared at a press conference with President Trump. They stated that there will be a massive stimulus package. Additionally, Secretary Mnuchin stated that the tax deadline would not be extended because much filing can be done online:
We encourage Americans who can file taxes to continue to file taxes on April 15 because for many Americans, you will get tax refunds and we don’t want you to lose out on those tax refunds.
However, you can defer payment for 90 days in most circumstances:
If you owe a payment to the IRS, you can defer up to $1 million as an individual, and $10 million to corporations, interest-free and penalty-free for 90 days. File your taxes, you’ll automatically not get charged interests or penalties.
The problem with not extending the deadline is something we’re seeing in the San Francisco Bay Area: What if all non-essential businesses are ordered to close? (Tax preparation firms are not essential businesses.) I think there’s a good chance this will impact other areas of the country besides the Bay Area. We’ve already made plans for this. While we can do some work from home, the speed we can do things at is definitely reduced. Additionally, some of our staff simply can’t work from home because of security issues. If we’re ordered to close we will be forced to file extensions for many returns. Unfortunately, I strongly suspect this will happen throughout the United States.
In any case, there is some relief though I think it would have been far better to have simply extended the deadline to July 15th.
Tags: 2020.Tax.Season