Taxpayers aiming to avoid heavy fees imposed on those who wait to file kept tax preparers busy today with a last-minute push to beat the federal income tax filing deadline of midnight today.
The dozen or so tax preparers at the H&R Block office on Vancouver’s Main Street continued their long work shifts today after having worked through the weekend with tax procrastinators. Ryan McNally, H&R Block’s district manager for Clark and Cowlitz counties, said the office will remain open Tuesday until 9 p.m. — or later if necessary. McNally urged taxpayers to file even if they can’t afford a tax payment.
The penalty for not filing is 5 percent per month on the amount of tax owed, he said. That penalty will not exceed 25 percent of unpaid taxes. On the other hand, the penalty for failing to pay after having filed a return is one-half of 1 percent of unpaid taxes for each month the taxes aren’t paid, up to 25 percent of your unpaid taxes.
“If they owe money, they need to file a return,” McNally said.
The IRS expects to receive about 148 million individual income tax returns this year. It projects that 23 million returns will be on paper, down 7 percent from last year. The agency’s most recent numbers show that as of March 28, the federal agency had received 82 million returns through e-file, about 91 percent of returns filed this year. About 9 percent, 8.3 million returns, were filed on paper.
The IRS reports 195,679 Clark County residents filed tax returns for tax year 2011. Of those, 86,488 were joint returns. Washington residents filed 3.2 million returns that same year, including 1.3 million joint returns.
