ONE DAY MORE

The IRS has officially announced that the official deadline for filing your 2006 federal income tax return and paying any tax due has been pushed back one day to April 17, 2007.

You will have extra time to file and pay because April 15 falls on a Sunday in 2007, and the following day, Monday, April 16, is “Emancipation Day”, a legal holiday in the District of Columbia.

The entire country has an April 17 deadline. Previously, the April 17 deadline applied just to individuals in the District of Columbia and six eastern states who are served by an IRS processing facility in Massachusetts, where Patriots Day will be observed on April 16.

The new April 17, 2007 deadline will apply to any of the following:

· 2006 federal individual income tax returns, whether filed electronically or on paper.

· Requests for an automatic six-month tax-filing extension, whether submitted electronically or on Form 4868.

· Tax year 2006 balance due payments, whether made electronically (direct debit or credit card) or by check.

· Tax-year 2006 contributions to a Roth or traditional IRA.

· Individual estimated tax payments for the first quarter of 2007, whether made electronically or by check.

· Individual refund claims for tax year 2003, where the regular three-year statute of limitations is expiring.

By law, filing and payment deadlines that fall on a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday are satisfied if met on the next business day. Under a federal statute enacted decades ago, holidays observed in the District of Columbia have impact nationwide on tax issues, not just in D.C. Under recently-enacted city legislation, April 16 is a holiday in the District of Columbia. The IRS realized that the new Emancipation Day holiday fell on April 16th after most forms and publications had gone to press.

Joe Kristan of ROTH AND COMPANY TAX UPDATES points out that “Emancipation Day” commemorates Abraham Lincoln signing the bill outlawing slavery in the District of Columbia in 1962. “How strange that it would extend the filing season bondage of tax preparers 145 years later.”