If a person can not file their taxes on time and have a excuse such as medical such as being in a coma, or things like being arrested within the US, prevented from leaving a foreign country or lost at sea, is their any official standardized way to be forgiven for late filing?
You file Form 4868, Application for Extension, and under “reason” you write “abducted by aliens.” Easy peasy.
Isn’t that required to file before you are abducted? (unless your aliens allow you to do so before the due date and their extraterrestrial society has diplomatic relations with the USA (of planet earth) which allow mail exchanges.
I missed the deadline one year due to medical issue. I called up when I got my fine notice and explained, and they said I had a good record and were waving all penalties (but not interest) as a one time thing.
The instructions for that form say the following. Bolding added by me.
“Late Filing Penalty
A late filing penalty is usually charged if your return is filed after the due date (including extensions). The penalty is usually 5% of the amount due for each month or part of a month your return is late. The maximum penalty is 25%. If your return is more than 60 days late, the minimum penalty is $210 (adjusted for inflation) or the balance of the tax due on your return, whichever is smaller. You might not owe the penalty if you have a reasonable explanation for filing late. Attach a statement to your return fully explaining your reason for filing late. Don’t attach the statement to Form 4868.”
You don’t need to give a reason. The IRS grants 6 month extensions to FILE. They’re not hard to get. It is not, however, and extension to PAY. That is due April 15-18.
As far as paying, they are willing to work with you. The IRS gets a bad rep but they’re considerably cuddly for a government agency. And a lot nicer than some state tax agencies.
You also don’t even need to file taxes unless you owe money or have several exceptions (self employed etc). But you can’t get your refund back if you don’t file, you just have a couple years to do so.
This is my point, is their any official standardized ways of being excused due to ‘issues’, and not looking at past taxes and them saying you have been a good boy/girl and We will allow it (as a personal case).
It is dependent on sending in a note that someone must approve as a one off excepting of goodwill or can someone qualify for such a thing based on the circumstances, thus entitled under law or policy to a automatic extension without notifying them?
What kind of person are we talking about? If the person is a regular employee who has taxes withheld and is owed a refund, there’s no penalty for filing up to three years late, and after that the penalty is that you can’t claim a refund. If you owe money, especially if you’re not a regular employee, then you attach a note explaining the circumstances to your return. I don’t think ‘being arrested’ would work though, as you still have to file taxes even if you’re in jail or prison.
Yes, but you have to file for the automatic extension in advance. I think the question here is more around if some emergency were to prevent you from filing anything at all.
I’m not sure this was made clear in the above posts: FILING late is virtually never a problem. But they want whatever money you owe ON TIME. So you file an extension, which applies solely to the paperwork, for pretty much any reason, including just not having your shit together yet. But you must send in a check for what you owe-- estimated, if necessary-- on April 15th. IOW, as I understand it (and have experienced it) there’s no acceptable excuse for not sending in the money on time.
Now, if you’re in a coma or something, and didn’t send in the money or the paperwork, then you’ll have to deal with getting your penalties, interest, etc. lessened after the fact. If you wake up, that is.
To add to my own post, if you can file anything in advance of the deadline, it’s generally easy to get extensions. There’s the automatic extension - used to be four months, maybe it’s six now? - but you can continue to request extensions after that if you provide some sort of reasonable reason. A common example is waiting on some sort of paperwork.
As noted upthread, this doesn’t get you off the hook from owing interest on shortfalls. It’s a good practice to take your best guess on what you’ll owe, err on the side of guessing higher, and pay that before the initial April 15 deadline.
Since this involves legal advice, let’s move it to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
When you file for an extension, it doesn’t matter what the reason is. There is no box for “reason” on Form 4868.
ninja’d
I don’t consider this legal advice, but the question is is their a defined known preexisting way to excuse a late filing due to the inability to file (due to circumstance) without appealing to the goodwill of the IRS personal on a case by case basis. Does such law exist? So not legal advice at all, just a GQ 
True, but 4868 only buys you the first (six-month) extension. Beyond that, you need to file a different form: https://www.irs.com/articles/what-know-about-second-and-additional-tax-extensions.