What to Do If You Missed the Tax Deadline

May 04, 2017

April what? I’ve written before about why not to procrastinate filing your taxes, but sometimes life just gets in the way. We recently received a question about what to do if you missed the tax filing deadline. Here are some steps to take:

  1. Don’t panic. Assuming you’re not found guilty of egregious tax fraud, you’re not going to jail. In fact, if you don’t owe anything, you won’t even have a penalty. I once filed late one year and my only punishment was having my refund delayed.
  1. Decide whether to do your taxes yourself or use a professional tax preparer. Here are some things to consider. Keep in mind that if your income is below $64k, you may now qualify to use name-brand tax software for free. (If your income is above $64k, you can still use the IRS’s fillable forms for free, but they don’t offer any real guidance so I wouldn’t recommend this unless your taxes are really simple and/or you really know a lot about tax preparation, in which case you probably wouldn’t be reading this.) The good news is that if you decide to hire a tax preparer, you may have an easier time finding one now that the busy tax season is over.
  1. Get your taxes done ASAP. If you do owe taxes, you’ll want to get the payment made as soon as possible to minimize interest and penalties. (Here are some things you can do if you can’t afford the payment.) If you’re owed a refund, my guess is that you can think of better uses of the money than continuing to loan it to federal government tax-free (although they could really use the money right now). Either way, you’ll be relieved to get it off your mind.
  1. Prepare for next time. Check out these tips to prepare for the next tax season. If you think you’ll need extra time, you can file for an automatic extension until October. However, you’ll still owe interest and penalties for any payments made past the filing deadline. To be on the safe side, you may want to adjust your W-4 to have more money withheld from your paychecks so that you don’t owe next year.

Don’t worry. You’re not the first person in America to miss the filing deadline. That being said, next time the consequences could be worse so try not to make the same mistake again.