Hm, I wonder if that implies that more people waited closer to the final deadline this year?
A lot of people wait till the final deadline since e-filing is so easy. Or at least that's how I tend to do it.
What an awful system. I probably wound up a day late with the postage because of that, but those assholes are lucky I filed at all. I was about ready to just throw my 1040 in the trash chute and give up my rebate as a lost cause. My time is worth more than this antiquated horseshit, and if I've learned anything from my grandpop it's that audits don't mean shit if you just keep ignoring them.
So, there's your procrastinator's attitude in a nutshell I guess.
If you're self-employed and not reporting income...well, that's another story. But this is terrible advice that you should definitely ignore, anyways.
Like I said, my grandfather owns a business and hasn't filed in decades. It caused my Uncle some serious consternation when he took the reigns, but he never faced any consequences in the form of being held in contempt, asset seizure, etc. Just some nastygrams every now and again.
But again, this is awful advice; I was mostly being facetious. You should not just outright ignore your taxes, you should at least make a desultory effort to get SOMETHING in. But damned if I'm going to bother pulling together any more forms than are in arms/web's reach, or mail in anything more than the bare minimum.
If you just keep ignoring it, eventually you will die and your estate won't be released to your heirs until the tax man gives it a final audit, and your estate will have to pay penalties and interest back to when you failed to pay.
If you're poor and/or broke, then sure, ignore an audit, because they can't get blood from a stone. :)
Avoid the catastrophe.
0. https://whoaremyrepresentatives.org/
1. http://www.npr.org/2017/03/29/521954033/stanford-professor-l...
And their protective measures demonstrably did not work, anyways. Requiring a tenuous chain of several checks to all succeed is ridiculous; I have plenty of ways to verify my identity, FFS.
This is why the new measures exist.
That's how I feel whenever I am forced to interact with the IRS. Once, I went to one of their fully automated systems only to find that the entire website was only open between the hours of 9AM-5PM on weekdays! What?
I'm getting real tired of this shit. It's just unreasonable to expect me to jump through all of these hoops for something that they insist is so essential. If it's essential, then make it easy! If it's not easy, then don't make me do it!
Life is hard enough without the government ordering me to do busywork, and then failing to support the systems which they want me to use. Either it shouldn't be an order, or the system should work. Full stop. And I wouldn't be so upset if this horseshit bureaucracy and presumption of malfeasance wasn't starting to permeate every single aspect of modern life.
Tax evasion and fraud affects us all, whether you want to admit it or not.
Unless you efile after the post office closes on the night of the 18th and/or don't own a printer and/or can't get there after efile fails but before the post office closes.
Or there are people like me, where my efile was rejected on April 19th. Now what do I do? If I try to efile again, it just says, "sorry, you're past the deadline". If I mail in a form it will technically be late, although I guess if they say anything I can show them my failed efile attempt...
Also, being late isn't that bad. You'll likely get a notice in the mail detailing out any late charges. Which for being 1 day late will be extremely minor relative to your income.
And yeah, I know being late isn't terrible, and in fact if you are owed a refund there is no penalty at all. But it's still annoying that it was late because critical government run infrastructure was broken.
The main line was slow on the 18th and people had very little wait time. The 19th was much the same. There were an excess of operators who were waiting for calls on the non-specialty line.
Go read Publication 17 for guidance for next year.
Though I'm also kinda weird, in that I actually rather like the process.
Not everyone overpays taxes in advance, so filing early provides no benefit other than moving a required task to the "done" pile sooner.
I was exactly even this year, guess my withholding was correct.
Unfortunately, my return clocks in around 30 pages and has multiple attached schedules and worksheets, which means I can't just do it the day of.