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family. We are a few days out from the tax deadline and if you're not prepared to file your 1040, it just might be time for you to consider filing form 4868, which is an application for automatic extension of time to file a US individual income tax return.
This form, if accepted by the IRS, will give you an additional six months to file your tax return without penalty. Now, if you don't fill this out properly, that request can be denied. If you have a balance due, you still could be looking at the failure to pay penalty. But if you have a balance due and you file this and it's accepted and you get the tax return filed before the October 15th deadline, you can save yourself penalties like the failure to file penalty, which can be up to 25% of the tax that you owe.
All right. So, this form is going to give you that additional six months if you were filing form 1040, 1040 SR for seniors, or the 1040 NR or 1040 SS. Okay. Now, this is not going to give you an extension of time to pay, only to file. I want to make note of that. This is an extension only to file, not to pay.
Now, to qualify for the extension, you need to properly estimate your 2025 tax liability. Okay, that's a part that a lot of people miss, and I'll talk about how to do that here in box four. Then we also want to make sure that we understand the payments that you have made for the 2025 tax year as well. Okay.
Now, if you do this and it is predicting that you have a balance due, the IRS does request that you make a payment with that because one, it's going to save you from any penalties if you get paid in full, but then number two, you're showing good faith that, hey, I know I have this balance. I'm going to do something about it. So, if nothing else, send a dollar. Okay.
So, with form 4868, there are three ways that you can make a request for the extension. You can fill this out and send it in electronically using the IRS e-file system with a tax software or by selecting a tax professional to do that for you. Now, with only being a few days away from the tax deadline, it may be a little difficult for you to get a competent tax professional who can handle this for you. If you don't have access to a tax software, you can fill it out by hand and you can mail it in.
Now, if you are sending in a payment, it will likely go to Charlotte, North Carolina, or you'll be sending it here to Louisville, Kentucky, where I am at. All right. Now, if you're sending it without a payment, it will likely be going to Austin, Texas. That's where a majority of them go. The other locations are Kansas City, Missouri, or Ogden, Utah. Okay.
And before I get into how to properly fill this out, I apologize if you're new here. My name is Timlan Bowens and I'm America's favorite EA. As an enrolled agent, I represent taxpayers before the IRS who owe the IRS $100,000 or more. So, on this channel, I like to share tips to help you avoid unnecessary penalties and balances that you can't pay in full to the IRS. Okay. So, it's kind of in alignment with my personal mission to fill the tax literacy gap one taxpayer at a time. Okay.
Now, the third way that you can request an extension is if you have any balance due, you can pay all or part of your estimated income tax due and make sure that you indicate that it's for an extension when you pay using your account at IRS.gov. Okay? I highly recommend if you're making a payment online that you do it from your IRS.gov account. You can make it through third-party sites, but that doesn't guarantee that it's going to actually go through on time, which would be April 15th when the payment is due. Okay? So, again, I highly recommend that you do it from your IRS.gov account on the IRS website.
Now, if that's not an option for you and you need to make sure that you get this filled out, you can do so. You're going to want to make sure that you have your name right here in part one for identification line one. In this example, we have a great A taxpayer. Okay. Now, they don't have a spouse, so we don't have any spouse information here. This grade A taxpayer matches exactly what it's going to look like on the tax return and it also matches what is on their social security number or social security card. My apologies. The address they're also located here in Louisville, Kentucky with me is 101 North 7th Street, Louisville, Kentucky 402. If you've been around for a while watching the channel, let me know down in the comments if you know what that address actually is.
You want to make sure that you have your social security number the same as it is on the return as well as however it is on your social security card. So, if you recently got married or you're a new citizen, make sure if you don't already know this number by heart that you double check what it is. Okay. So, in this example, we have 320-58-999. All right. And since we don't have a spouse right here, we are not going to have a spouse's social security number to put. Now, if this was a taxpayer and their spouse marriage filing jointly, we would have the spouse's name here as well, and we'd also have their social security number. Okay.
Um, let's see here for part two, individual income tax. This is the part where I see a lot of taxpayers and including tax professionals get this wrong. For this to be done correctly, you have to have the estimate of your total tax liability for 2025. You can figure out what this estimate is by completing 1040ES. Okay? Now, with a 1040ES, that's what we do to figure out what our estimated tax payments are going to be. And a lot of people don't actually do this, which is why a lot of business owners or people who have multiple streams of income actually end up owing unexpectedly because they haven't made that estimate. Okay? So if you made a similar amount of money um that you did in the prior year, you could pull your tax liability from the prior year. But the most precise thing is going to be if you actually run your income through 1040ES. Okay.
Now, for total 2025 payments, this is going to be any money that you had withheld from a paycheck, from a pension, um any estimated tax payments that you made, that amount is going to go right here. So, for line six, we see balance due. You're going to subtract line five from four. We can tell right here that great A taxpayer is actually going to have a refund. So, they're not going to be required to send anything in for this extension to be accepted. Okay? So, we don't have to put anything here in box seven.
Now, you could potentially automatically get this extension if you're out of the country and a US citizen or resident, but there are certain criteria that have to be met if you are out of the country. Okay. Then box nine or line nine with this box, it says, "Check here if you file form 1040NR and didn't receive wages as an employee subject to US income tax withholding." All right. Now, that's probably not going to apply to the majority of you, so I won't get too deep into that.
But I do want to point out that some people don't have to fill out the extension in order to get one. Those people are ones who are in the military and maybe they're in an area of combat outside of the US. People in natural uh in areas where a natural disaster has been claimed by the government, they would not necessarily have to. You can check on IRS.gov to see if your area that was affected by a disaster has an automatic extension. In those types of scenarios, you don't have to file form 4868. But if you're unsure if your area has been declared a federal disaster area, you can look on the IRS website as I mentioned before, or you can go ahead and file one to be better safe than sorry. Because again, if you have a balance, the failure to file penalty can be a maximum of 25% of whatever you owe. So, for example, if you owe $10,000 and you don't get this filed within six months, then you're automatically looking at a failure to file penalty of $2,500. There's no need to deal with that if you don't have to.
All right. If you have any questions about this form, let me know down in the comments. And just as a reminder for those of you who may be mailing this form, if you are mailing it, remember the new USPS postmark rule, it may not get postmarked on the day that you drop it off at the post office. So my recommendation, like when sending anything to the IRS, send it certified mail so that you can actually see that it is postmarked by April 15th. Okay?
Hope you found this video insightful. If you have any questions at all or any concerns because you missed the extension deadline or the tax filing deadline, you can book a call with me at www.bowensaxsolutions.com. I'll see you guys in the next video.