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Tax Deadline Remains April 15

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.

Zinner & Co. is proud to introduce our new 2020 tax season interns. We hope this snapshot of them will help you get to know them, as some of our clients will be receiving communications from our interns, as they will work on tax returns this season. 

One of the most common tax-related misconceptions is that filing a tax extension increases your risk of a tax audit. 

This longstanding myth is simply not true, as filing a tax extension can statistically decrease the risk of an audit.

In addition to statistically decreasing the risk of an audit, there is also one other benefit to extending a tax return.

Many individuals may think the time to plan for tax season occurs during the tax season, which occurs after their tax year has ended.

Unfortunately, this is often too late to make any adjustments, which may have benefited the taxpayer.  

Similarly, businesses can also fall into this line of thinking and fail to plan for tax season during their tax year.

Due to many changes in the tax law under numerous tax acts that have been implemented over the past decade, including delay in the issuance of tax forms needed to complete individual income tax returns, the compression of the tax preparation and filing season has become even more severe. 

The tax code is long and complicated and oftentimes, taxpayers do not know what deductions or credits are available, which means they cannot take advantage of possible savings.

With so many changes under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the 2019 SECURE Act now in place, changes have been made regarding the deductibility of expenses that both business and individual taxpayers may not be aware of.

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.

It’s the 4^th quarter. The holidays are right around the corner. The last thing you may want to think about is income taxes … but there are some compelling reasons why you should be thinking ahead.

Last year’s tax season saw the biggest change to the tax code in over 30 years. At the end of the tax season, we noted that one of the lessons learned was that individuals who engage us in tax planning early, on average, fared much better than those who did not. There are some very important reasons for this:

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.