Winter Storm Stella packed quite a wallop across much of the northeastern United States with snow totals reaching upwards of 40 inches in parts of New York State. With many areas still digging out, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has announced that it is granting many affected businesses extra time to request a six-month extension to file their 2016 federal income tax returns.
Business taxpayers who are unable to file their tax return by today’s due date (March 15, 2017) can request an automatic extension by filing federal form 7004, Application for Automatic Extension of Time To File Certain Business Income Tax, Information, and Other Returns (downloads as a pdf), on or before March 20, 2017. The form is also available on IRS.gov.
Form 7004 provides a six-month extension for returns filed by partnerships (forms 1065 and 1065B) and S corporations (forms 1120S). The form is always available but must be traditionally filed by the due date. With this additional relief, taxpayers have five more days to request an extension. Remember that an extension gives you extra time to file, not extra time to pay (though with pass-through returns, that’s not usually an issue).
The March 15 due date is, of course, new for some taxpayers this year. Partnership tax return due dates were moved to March 15 as part of a larger restructuring of taxpayer due dates. You can read more about those, and review a chart of revised due dates, here.
To take advantage of this relief, taxpayers should write “Winter Storm Stella” on the form 7004 extension request, if filing form 7004 by paper. As always, the fastest and easiest way to get an extension is to file this form electronically.
The IRS says that it will continue to monitor conditions and provide additional relief if circumstances warrant.
