IRS ISSUES GUIDANCE ON JULY 15 TAX DEADLINE

As a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the treasury is moving Tax Day from April 15, 2020 to July 15, 2020. The IRS just released Notice 2020-18 providing additional details of this postponement, which:

1) Automatically postpones the due date for affected taxpayers with returns or making payments due April 15, 2020 to July 15, 2020. There is no requirement to file an extension to file a return for this postponement to apply.

2) Specifies that affected taxpayers include an individual, a trust, an estate, a partnership, an association, a company or a corporation.

3) The relief is for 2019 income tax payments, including self-employment taxes, and 2020 estimated income tax payments, including self-employment taxes, that are due on April 15, 2020. Unlike the previous announcement, there is no limit on the dollar amount that will be deferred until July 15, 2020.

4) The postponement is not applicable to any other type of taxes that may be due April 15, 2020. Other taxes and returns, such as gift taxes, would still have to be filed (or extended) and paid by April 15, 2020. The Notice only covers payments that are due on April 15, 2020. Therefore, any payments that would be due before or after April 15, 2020 are not eligible for the postponement. If the postponed tax payments are not made by July 15, 2020, interest and penalties will begin accruing on July 16, 2020.

This will be welcome news for many taxpayers, as it will ease their filing burden and free up cash flow for 90 days for those taxpayers that was expecting to make a payment for income taxes for their 2019 tax liability or 2020 quarterly estimated tax that was due on April 15, 2020.

As stated in previous alerts, this Notice does not pertain to state and local jurisdictions. We will continue to monitor state and local governments to see how they react.

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