No, but there are no legal repercussions from the post office if you don’t file your return, either. I’d have no problem with you pitting the IRS website if it shut down at 5pm on April 15, but you’re pitting a separate entity altogether for not enabling your procrastination.
It would be better for business if they did, I’m sure, but they don’t have to. Much like the post office doesn’t have to tell you that they’re not staying open until midnight on April 15.
Really, what response would you expect from the IRS (assuming they cared, which we established pretty well that they don’t) if you ended up not being able to mail your return until the 16th and you said “well, you can’t blame me, the post office is usually open until midnight, and this year they closed at the normal time.”?
Using the rates here, failure to file is 5% for each month the tax return is late, up to a total maximum penalty of 25%, failure to pay is 0.5% for each month the tax is not paid in full, and interest rates change every three months, but are about 6% yearly.
If my math is right (read as: someone check, plz), then after two days you’d roughly owe $7.99 more; after 30 days, $119.86.
Someone walked into the Post Office to ask about tax forms while I was there mailing mine yesterday afternoon. I thought that was silly. Even if his taxes are simple, mid-afternoon on the official due date is kinda late to wait to look for the forms.
I’ll admit I was no paragon of timeliness–but I wrote my checks and sealed them in envelopes, and took them to the post office to make sure my postage was right.
(My Tax Preparer, better known as Dad, had used an incredibly goofy envelope size. So one ordinary first class stamp would have been sufficient, but the post office person had to measure it to find out.)
Got you beat. Orlando, Florida, downtown post office closes at six. No night slot. No outside mail box. But, there are both FedEx and UPS boxes just outside the closed doors.
Actually, if the federal government OWES YOU money (per the OP), you DON’T have to file on April 15th (state government is different, at least in Ohio). This is per the IRS’s own website here.
“There is no penalty assessed by the IRS for filing a late return qualifying for a refund.”
In fact, the article says that the deadline was April 15, 2008 for people filing for the year 2004! You can file up to three years late, after that you lose your refund. I wouldn’t recommend it, and you better be darn sure that you’re owed a refund, since you can probably imagine what the penalties would be if you OWED THEM money. But they don’t mind your loaning it to them interest-free.
I usually file in February or early March and get my direct deposit refund a week or so later. This year I mailed my 4 returns in at 8 PM on the 15th. The extra couple of months interest on the over $10,000 in checks I mailed out was worth the extra hassle. The day still sucked.
Technically, you could have dropped them in the box on Monday the 14th, eliminated ALL of the hassle, at a cost of 1 day of interest, maybe one dollar.
Ah, but if he wrote a check, the money may still be in his account collecting interest. It’s possible (I don’t work for the IRS), but mailing his taxes on the 15th with a large bulk of other tax returns may slightly delay that money coming out of his account longer than if he mailed it on the 14th in a smaller bulk.
ETA: Now, he can buy a beer with the money his delay earned and cry in it when he thinks of what he *could *have done with that money.
I don’t know why anyone complains about Turbo Tax. I pay $30 and sit in front of the computer, answer simple questions, and let the program do all of the work for me. I don’t have to multiply, divide, and subtract line 24(a) of form 277C, or anything. Just answer the questions and get the return back.
Florida has no state income tax, so I don’t know how it would work at a state level, but federal is awesome, IMHO…
Most post offices in large metro areas have UPS and FedEx boxes outside. And downtown Orlando is like downtown Tampa or downtown Miami or the CBD in Charlotte or the financial district in Manhattan. Most things are closed by 6 because most people are gone by 6.
In most large metro areas, the extended hour post office will be at the largest airport. Like in Orlando – the MCO post office is open til midnight every night.
Since it wasn’t a hassle at all ( I didn’t wait until the last minute to do them, just mail them. And driving to the post office and dropping them in a box was hardly a hassle.) and I don’t drink beer, I come out ahead overall. OTOH, thinking about what I could have done with the money kind of makes me wish I did drink.
jtgain, not only did I have federal and state, here there is the city tax and the local school district tax. What I found interesting is that TurboTax had the school district tax information in the state program. The only one I had to do any work on was the city tax, which uses a stupid form that has no directions or explanations about what numbers to use from where. Last year I screwed up and used the wrong numbers and ended up having to pay an extra $1.26. :rolleyes: I just hope I used the correct figures this year.
