The IRS has announced that the 2012 tax season is officially open. Well, sort of. The IRS has opened its doors for the season but what you can do just yet is still limited: e-file and Free File returns won’t be accepted until January 17, 2012. Today, however, you can (and should) start getting your information in order. The IRS opening the tax season is kind of the equivalent of catchers and pitchers reporting for spring training.
The IRS also announced that taxpayers will have a couple of extra days to file their 2011 tax returns in 2012. Taxpayers will have until Tuesday, April 17, 2012, to file their 2011 tax returns and pay any tax due. Make a note. It’s not Monday, April 16, 2012, as some media outlets are reporting.
Here’s why there’s some confusion: April 15 falls on a Sunday this year. So, you skip to the next business day which would normally be Monday, April 16. However, April 16 is also Emancipation Day, a holiday observed in Washington, D.C. Emancipation Day marks the anniversary of the day that President Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act which freed 3,100 slaves in the District, making DC residents the “first freed” by the federal government. The holiday was celebrated annually after the Civil War for many years; there was a break in the observance of the holiday in 1901 and celebrations didn’t resume until more than 100 years later. In 2005, Emancipation Day was made an official public holiday in D.C. That’s significant because, under federal law, D.C. holidays which are observed have an impact on tax deadlines in the same way that federal holidays do. That means that Tax Day cannot land on April 16, so taxpayers all over the country have the benefit of the extension to April 17, 2012.
Don’t assume that the extra two days moves all individual federal income tax deadlines forward because it does not. The overseas exception due date will still be June 15, 2012, and individual federal income tax returns on extension will be due on October 15, 2012 (not simply 6 months forward to October 17, 2012).
So taking all of that into consideration, as of today, you have 102 days left before Tax Day. Yep, that’s actually three extra days: it’s a leap year.
Will the extra days help out taxpayers? I don’t think so. But it certainly can’t hurt.
