The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service recently announced the distribution of economic impact payments will begin within the next three weeks, and will be distributed automatically, with no action required by most people.
However, some seniors and others who typically do not file returns, will need to submit a simple tax return to receive the stimulus payment.
The U.S. Treasury Department, Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Department of Labor announced small and midsize employers can begin taking advantage of two new refundable payroll tax credits, designed to immediately and fully reimburse them, dollar-for-dollar, for the cost of providing Coronavirus-related leave to their employees.
While taxpayers still have to file their taxes by April 15, 2020, the deadline to pay taxes has been extended by 90 days until July 15, 2020.
During a March 17th press conference regarding the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced taxpayers will have an additional 90-days through July 15, 2020 to pay their taxes, penalty-free and interest-free.
He said individual taxpayers can defer up to $1 million of tax payments and corporations up to $10 million in tax payments.
The IRS issued its annual inflation adjustments for key tax items for the tax year 2020. Among them are new amounts for standard deductions.
For the tax year 2020, the standard deduction for a married couple filing jointly will be raised from $24,400 to 24,800. For single taxpayers and married couples filing separately, the standard deduction will be raised from $12,200 to 12,400. For heads of households, the standard deduction will be $18, 650.
Margin tax rates will change as follows:
The IRS has released the retirement contribution limits for the 2020 tax year. The new limits are adjusted based on increases in the cost of living.
In a blow to several high-tax states, a federal judge has upheld a key provision of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap.
Under the TCJA, congress placed a cap on the amount taxpayers could claim on their Schedule A for state and local taxes.
The IRS has unveiled the new, redesigned Form W-4 for the tax year 2020. This new form eliminates many of the complex tables used in previous versions and includes many enhancements from the earlier draft version.
The IRS announced that the Modernized e-File (MeF) will be unavailable for brief periods during July and August during scheduled system upgrades. The outages will occur as follows:
Ask the Expert: I recently moved. I set up mail forwarding with the U.S. Postal Service, is there anything else I need to do?
Setting up mail forwarding is a great start, but there are a couple more steps you should take:
National Taxpayer Advocate (NAS) Nina Olson, who is scheduled to retire on July 31st, 2019, addressed Congress for the 37th and presumably last time in her role. Olson, who has held the role of NAS for 18 years, addressed Congress to review the 2019 tax season and the state of the IRS.
