Local accountants kept busy by the new July 15 tax deadline

In this COVID-impacted year, with so many delays and postponements to seemingly every facet of everyday living, even the time-honored April 15 date to file income taxes got pushed back to July 15.

July 15 has now come and gone and some taxpayers, caught by surprise by the new mid-summer deadline, scrambled to get their returns done or to file an extension to Oct. 15.

“It’s still the same usual suspects,” said Tyson Shoemaker, C.P.A., of Kcoe-Isom Accounting in Jackson.

“We were proactive in reaching out to our clients to keep them in the loop,” said Shoemaker, who has been in accounting work for 13 years.

“Clients knew they had more time thanks to the pandemic, and some weren’t willing to work on it,” added Shoemaker, who estimates of his 200 clients, perhaps 25 were not ready to file by Wednesday.

“When April 15 got pushed back,” said Nick Steimle, C.P.A., of Begley, Young, Unterreiner and White in Cape Girardeau, “some of our clients hit the snooze button.”

Steimle, a Southeast Missouri State University graduate with 14 years’ experience in the business, estimated 20% to 25% of his clients are asking questions about their tax options.

“We (accountants) haven’t had a weekend these past couple of weeks,” Steimle said, “(and) we’ve told folks who aren’t ready to file to extend until October.”

Estimated tax

An extra wrinkle in 2020 is the estimated tax payments normally due April 15 and June 15 both were pushed back to July 15, with clients this week forced to fork over a considerably larger check than is normal to the U.S. Treasury.

“We’ve had clients tell us they can’t make the full (July 15) balance due (for estimated tax),” said Steimle, who pointed out the penalty for failure to file estimated tax on time is smaller than not submitting a timely full year tax return.

In this strange tax year, Shoemaker said, the next estimated tax bill is due in just two months, Sept. 15. The usual interval is three months between such payments to Uncle Sam.

Estimated tax is the method used to pay tax on income that is not subject to withholding. This income includes earnings from self-employment, interest, dividends, rents and alimony.