IRS To Delay This Year's Tax Filing Deadline
By Kevin Liptak, Katie Lobosco and Jeanne Sahadi, CNN
(CNN) -- The Internal Revenue Service plans to delay this year's tax filing deadline by roughly a month, to mid-May, according to an official familiar with the plans.
The official said the decision was made in order to allow filers more time to navigate tax situations complicated by the coronavirus pandemic.
Lawmakers, led by Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Bill Pascrell of New Jersey, had urged the move, citing the pandemic.
Last year, the IRS moved the deadline to July 15, giving Americans an additional three months to file their taxes amid the pandemic.
As of March 5, the IRS had yet to process 6.7 million 2020 returns that had been filed since Feb. 12. It had processed nearly 49 million.
In addition to processing tax returns, the IRS is also in the process of sending out a third round of about 150 million stimulus payments. As of Wednesday, about 90 million had been sent out.
The $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill signed into law by President Joe Biden last week also directs the IRS to send out periodic payments for an expanded child tax credit, as well as handle several other changes like excluding up to $10,500 in unemployment benefits from income taxes.
Even though the IRS extended its deadline, that doesn't mean individual states will. If they don't, that means that filers in those states may need to file by April 15 anyway, unless they file for an automatic extension.
That's because states often use one's federal adjusted gross income or federal taxable income as the starting point to determine a filer's income subject to state taxes.
At the moment, Maryland is the only state to have extended its filing deadline, to July 15. Other states have stuck with their original filing date, which is April 15 in most instances, according to the Federation of Tax Administrators.
Some states' current dates differ. They are Hawaii, April 20; Delaware and Iowa, April 30; Virginia, May 3; and Louisiana, May 17.
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