Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by MichaelApproved | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

MichaelApproved

> Treasury Secretary Mnuchin announces decision in tweet

Crazy how these announcements are done via tweet. It would be nice to have something formal listed on their website.

Looking at their home page https://www.irs.gov it still says "File Your Tax Return - Tax deadline is April 15,2020".

Edit: Am I going crazy? The article used to say it was published on the 17th.

View on HN

Took a little longer than it should have to find the formal announcement https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/payment-deadline-extended-to-ju...

That's a separate announcement from two days about the payment extension. The filing extension has only been tweeted at this point as far as I can tell: https://twitter.com/IRSnews/status/1241008572332466178

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm948

That's the old announcement (doesn't cover today's filing extension).

Does it really matter? As far as I know, you always got a six month filing extension just by asking. So the only thing that is of concern is the payment extension.

I'm sure it will be updated. He probably just wanted to get the word out as soon as possible.

It's been 3 days...

Edit: I could've sworn the article said it was published on the 17th. Now it says the 20th.

The payment deadline was moved 3 days ago, the filing deadline was moved this morning

I could've sworn the article said it was PUBLISHED and UPDATED on the 17th. Now it says it was published and updated on the 20th.

the COVID box to the left of the filing deadline does lead to a page with the proper dates.

Information on the payment deferral was posted 2 days ago:

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm948

There's a link to that page from the IRS home page.

The filing deadline was just moved to July 15 two hours ago.

Well, I'm guessing there's more of an approval process for updating the IRS website or communicating there than they ... tolerate for tweets, but still, it does seem like too much of a lag, even by the standards of bureaucracy.

The workers who maintain the website likely are working from home and have a larger workload on them than normal. I could push changes out to my personal website in minutes but the IRS might have a complicated CMS with a long approval pipeline that takes time and coordination to work through.

www.irs.gov shows conflicting info - on the main page there's a link to "Coronavirus Tax Relief" page that has the new deadline on it. However, also on the main page there's a link to "File Your Tax Return" page that still says April 15th. Left hand and right hand?

Note that at the news release link, they have bolded payment. So, you still have to file by April 15, but if you owe, the payment is not due until July 15.

Edit: and now I see that the tweet re: filing was just this morning, so website change may be later today. But, do they want to do a production deploy on Friday? :)

This is government. They could do on Sunday midnight if they wish.

> on the main page there's a link to "Coronavirus Tax Relief" page that has the new deadline on it.

No, it has the PAYMENT deadline extension on it, not the FILING deadline extension. As of writing this, it says, "Payment Deadline Extended to July 15, 2020".

Today's announcement is, as the HN title says, an extension of the filing deadline to match the already-extended payment deadline.

This is a non-event. Anyone can get a filing deadline. Just file for an extension.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com