Tax news and guidance for individual taxpayers — filing tips, deductions, refunds, and everything else that hits your personal return.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reminding taxpayers with an expiring Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) to submit renewal applications. Failing to renew an ITIN by the end of the year may cause refund and processing delays in 2020. An ITIN is assigned to a taxpayer who is not eligible to obtain a Social Security Number (SSN)….
I can tell from the letters piling up on my desk: it’s officially correspondence season! Correspondence season is the term that tax professionals use to describe the period after tax season officially ends. Many taxpayers think that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) takes a break just after tax season, but that’s not the case. As…
Last year, after pushback from taxpayers and tax professionals, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) promised to revisit form W-4, Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate. The IRS issued a statement confirming that “the Treasury Department and the IRS will incorporate important changes into a new version of the Form W-4, Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate, for 2020.” Today, the…
Life just got a whole lot better for some recent college graduates. During the 2019 commencement address at Morehouse College, self-made billionaire Robert F. Smith announced that he was paying the student debt for the entire class. The gift is estimated to be worth $40 million. It was the second gift that Smith announced during the commencement ceremony….
After arguing for years that its drivers were not employees, the ride-share company Uber announced last week that it had settled with tens of thousands of drivers who claimed that they had been misclassified as independent contractors. The timing of the announcement wasn’t coincidental, coming just one day before Uber’s initial public offering (IPO) on the…
Most folks assume that work for tax professionals tapers off after Tax Day, but for many of us, the pace actually picks up. This is often the time when the tough questions begin. And chief among them: What happens if you discover a mistake on your tax return? My answer is almost always the same:…
Tax Day was Monday, April 15, for most taxpayers in 2019 (though taxpayers who live in Maine or Massachusetts have until April 17, 2019). Not every taxpayer who needed to file made it on time (I’m not counting those of you who filed for an extension since you’re still timely). What about you? Maybe your hard drive died, maybe…
Ready to file your federal tax return? If you know that you can’t pay up by Tax Day, April 15, file anyway. Penalties apply for failure to file and failure to pay. To reduce the hit to your wallet, file your return even if you’re going to owe and even if you know that you can’t pay. After you file,…
If you’re planning on filing your federal income tax return in the next few days, you’re not alone: the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) says some 50 million taxpayers have yet to file (as of April 12, 2019). No matter how close to the wire you get, as long as your return is postmarked by April 15, the…
Ready to file your federal income tax return? If you owe taxes, don’t forget to pay what you owe by Tax Day. If you pay your taxes in full by April 15, 2019, you’ll avoid additional penalties and interest. Here are several options for paying your tax bill this year: 1. Pay by cash. It used…