Government Shutdown Will Delay Tax Filing Season

One of the many unfortunate side effects of the 16 day Government Shutdown is the likely delay of tax refunds for millions of early filers by 1-2 weeks.

The IRS announced Tuesday that they won’t be able to start processing tax returns until at least January 28 and possibly as late as February 4th.  Under normal circumstances the processing would begin on January 21st.  And with congress set to return to budget talks in early January, the possibility of a January Government shutdown could delay refunds even longer.

Despite the Government shutdown and possible processing delay, taxpayers are still required to file their returns by April 15th and companies must still send all W-2’s and other tax forms on schedule.  

The IRS stated the extra time is needed to program and test tax-processing systems which will be used during the 2014 filing season.

Roughly 90% of the IRS was idle during the shutdown, putting the Internal Revenue Service around three weeks behind in preparations.  

The IRS will announce the date it will begin accepting returns in December and stated there won’t be any advantage to filing before that date.  Each year sees many new tax changes and laws, all of which have to be updated in the IRS computers.  There will be a lot of fingers crossed that there aren’t any additional problems between now and January, in order to limit the delays to the current estimate of one or two weeks.

BW James LLP has you covered when it comes to staying up to date on all tax updates and can help keep you prepared for the normal tax deadlines.  For more information about the professionals at BW James visit http://www.bwjames.com