Filing tax returns is usually a main concern this time of year for individuals and businesses. With the current Coronavirus crisis, however, taxes seem much less important. On March 18, 2020, the IRS provided tax payment relief for individual and corporate taxpayers by delaying the tax payment date from April 15, 2020 until July 15, 2020.
Many states have now indicated that they intend to follow the federal lead for tax payments and/or extensions of time to file. This relief in payments or tax return filings varies by state, and more state announcements may be made in the coming days/weeks. To that end, the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) has created a state-by-state chart to begin tracking the various state responses as to:
- how they are responding to the Coronavirus pandemic; and
- what filing and tax payment relief they will be granting, if any.
Here is a link to the AICPA website where you can access the “AICPA State Tax Filing Relief Chart for Coronavirus.”
States That Have Issued Tax Return Filing Guidance
Several states have already issued guidance extending tax return filing and payment deadlines including:
- California: extended individuals, corporations, partnerships and LLCs to June 15th if affected by the Coronavirus pandemic (taxpayers do not need to be directly impacted and will self-identify as done with other natural disasters).
- Connecticut: extended its payment and filing due dates for 2019 corporate tax returns CT-1120 and CT-1120CU to June 15th while also extending the payment due date for CT-1065/CT-1120 SI pass-through entity returns to June 15th but only extending the filing due date to April 15th.
- Florida: **CORRECTION** Though the Governor announced that there maybe some potential delays for payments of corporate taxes, no extensions have been officially granted and original due dates (May 1st for calendar year C Corps) remain in place and have not been extended to June 30th.
- Illinois: Attorney General has granted a 30-day extension to file and pay (but interest will accrue) for estate tax returns due between March 16th and April 15th.
- Maryland: extended non-income business tax returns (sales and use, withholding, admissions & amusement tax, etc.) to June 1st.
- North Carolina: will accept penalty waiver requests for returns due March 15th as long as they are filed, and taxes paid by April 15th.
- South Carolina: extended the due date for returns and tax payments due between April 1st through June 1st to June 1st.
Since the federal government has only extended the time to pay taxes, but not to file the tax returns, it is unclear now what specific relief states will end up providing. We certainly expect most states to be issuing guidance on whether they will be providing any extension relief over the next few weeks. Please stay tuned and feel free to access the above chart as the AICPA has been updating it regularly.
