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TAX DAY: How much time do you have to file? What to know about asking for an extension

If you’ve been putting off fiddling your taxes until the last-minute, today is your deadline. It’s Tax Day – which means, you have to file your taxes or file an extension by midnight.

2021 was the second straight year the Internal Revenue Service and the State of Ohio have pushed back Tax Day from its traditional April 15 date because of the COVID pandemic.

News Center 7 stopped by P&A Tax and Accounting in Centerville Monday and saw a few last-minute filers picking up their completed return paperwork or, in some cases, mailing off checks to local and state governments and the IRS.

Lance Hammontree from Dayton was one of them. “We gotta do what we gotta do and just have to pay Uncle Sam his money,” Hammontree said.

Hammontree said he works in sales and said he “typically” waits until the last-minute to file his tax returns most years. “I have to pay Uncle Sam on my taxes every year so I typically do wait until the deadline,” Hammontree said. “It’s nice, unfortunately with the COVID, that they still extended it from the mid-April (deadline), so I just waited until today to get them done.”

Certified Public Accountant, Wes Campbell said most of his clients, like Hammontree, who put off filing until closer to Tax Day have situations just like Hammontree. “A lot of times they owe and they don’t want to have anything to do with it until the last minute,” Campbell said. “And they call us and we know who they are and we get them done.”

Campbell has been a CPA for the last 10 years and he’s been in the tax business for the last two decades.

He said a really important thing to remember if you’re filing an extension on your taxes today is that it gives you more time to file your taxes and not more time to pay if you owe the government on your tax return this year. “You’re supposed to pay today,” Campbell said. “It’s not an extension to pay, it’s an extension to file.”

You can file an extension for free on the IRS’ website at IRS.gov. You have until midnight to file an extension. If you’re old school and like to fill out paper tax forms, they have to be postmarked by today (May 17) to meet the deadline.

If you don’t pay your taxes owed by the end of today, you could owe interest on the unpaid tax. You can also be hit with an additional fee for not filing your taxes on time.

If you do file an extension by tonight’s deadline, you can get an extension to October 15, 2021.

Hammontree met the Tax Day deadline and he said he’s just happy to not have to worry about tax season again until April. “Everything’s done,” he said. “And I sent them a check off and we’ll be good to go.”

Campbell said he’s ready to slow down a bit and ditch the seven-day, 90-plus-hour work weeks that come with tax season in his line of work. “It’s going to be nice going back to a 40-hour work week,” Campbell said. “See the family and just enjoy the weekends.”

Many local communities have their tax filing deadlines today too – like Fairborn and Centerville.

But other municipalities, like Springboro, for example, have theirs a little later.

Tax Day in Springboro is June 4. It’s a good idea to check with your community to see when the tax filing deadline is in your part of the Miami Valley.


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