If you started off today freaking out because you haven't finished — or even started — your 2015 tax return, chill.
The federal (and most state) tax-filing deadline this year is April 18.
That means you have the whole weekend to work on taxes. Sorry.
Taking tax steps: You can, of course, file for an extension. That will let you procrastinate until Oct. 17 (yes, that Oct. 15 deadline is later this year, too, since the 15th falls on a Saturday).
But if you think you'll owe Uncle Sam, you'll need to at least do a down-and-dirty tax filing run to come up with a good guesstimate of what you must pay with your Form 4868 filing.
End of filing season tips: Paying your tax bill was the topic of a couple of tax tips this week. One looks at ways to send your money to the Internal Revenue Service electronically; the other examines your options if you have a tax bill too big to pay all at once.
The other three tips explore deductions to claim, or not, as well as a parallel tax system that some folks find themselves facing.
Specifically, the Daily Tax Tips posted the week of April 11-15 are:
- Don't dare deduct these expenses! (Monday, April 11, 2016)
- Alternative Minimum Tax alert (Tuesday, April 12, 2016)
- Private mortgage insurance still deductible (Wednesday, April 13, 2016)
- 6 tax e-payment options (Thursday, April 14, 2016)
- Ways to pay a big IRS bill (Friday, April 15, 2016)
If you decide you're going to work on your taxes this weekend and want even more advice beyond the end-of-week tax tip roundups, you can check out the special monthly blog pages where tips for/from January, February, March and April are collected.
On Monday, April 18, the actual filing deadline, one more tip will be added to the April page to help you make it through the first filing deadline.
Until then, have a good weekend, regardless of whether you're working on your 1040 (we'll be around, too, with a blog post or two to help) or just enjoying early spring.
