Writer: Steve Dinnen
Remember those traffic jams every April 15, when we all lined up at a local post office to drop our tax returns into the outgoing mail to beat the midnight filing deadline? That excitement went away with electronic filing. And now the thrill of April 15 has been tempered by pandemic-related decisions both in 2020 and this year to push back the deadline for filing a 1040 return.
This year’s deadline is now May 17. For procrastinators, that means you’ll have another month to make a contribution to your 2020 IRA account. Also pushed off to May 17 have been deadlines for 2020 contributions to Roth IRAs, health savings accounts, Archer medical savings accounts and Coverdell education savings accounts.
The government has not postponed the April 15 deadline to file first-quarter 2021 estimated tax payments. This affects millions of gig workers, self-employed business owners and people who don’t have periodic deductions taken from their paychecks.
Iowa has pushed the deadline for filing personal returns and making estimated tax payments to June 1.
The IRS got bogged down a bit because it was put in charge of both processing tax returns and the second round of stimulus checks. Still, in the first week of accepting filings it reported receiving 335 returns every second.
