It's Deadline Day To File Your Income Taxes
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – If you haven't filed your 2013 income taxes yet, the clock is ticking. You have until the end of the day to get them done, get them in the mail or file for an extension.
Officials with the Internal Revenue Service said about 35 million tax payers wait until the last week to file their taxes. More people are electronically filing taxes, and that has an impact on how many people the IRS can audit.
Tax experts said the IRS faced budget cuts in recent years, which has the agency paying for more technology costs. Last year the IRS audited less than one percent of all individual tax returns. That's the lowest rate since 2005, and experts predict that number will be even lower this year.
But Chad Piehl from the firm Piehl, Hanson, and Beckman said the IRS is still tracking your dollars.
"Their audit level this year will be equal to some in the 80s so your chances are less. Part of that is a little misleading because the IRS does a lot of return review and will send letters out for potential errors, not considered an audit but they really look at the returns in a different way than they used to years ago," Piehl said.
Some good news: Out of the 135 million tax returns filed, 78 million will qualify for a refund. So that's just more than half.
It's interesting to take a look at the breakdown of where our tax dollars go once we file. Here is a breakdown for every $100 paid in taxes, this is where some of that money went into federal programs in 2013.
For every $100 paid in taxes, defense and military benefits got $23.68, social security got $23.39, health care received $22.23, transportation got $2.62 and education got $1.32. That's according to the Wall Street Journal.
