The future of our 2018 taxes
If you happened to forget to file your taxes or ran out of time, you still have until midnight on Wednesday to file. The extended deadline is due to widespread outages on the IRS’s website Tuesday, so the agency gave tax payers one more day.
“The system outage that the IRS has this year is nothing to worry about. But it was nice that they gave us an extra day to get those checks in the mail. So today is the last day to make sure you have your checks postmarked,” said Jennifer Landon, a financial advisor at Journey Financial Services, Inc. in Idaho Falls.
There are many changes happening with the new tax bill going into play for 2018. For example, the standard deductions are increasing.
“What that means is that people who are itemizing their deductions now may not need to itemize their deductions next year to get the same type of a write-off. So the standard deselection might be large enough hat it could compile a good deduction for a lot of people who are taking the effort to itemize now,” Landon said.
Now that tax season is winding down its already time to prep for next year. If the new changes affect you, it is a good idea to to ask how to organize ahead of time.
“Reach out to your tax preparer or your CPA and ask them in your specific circumstances, what types of records you need to be prepared to keep track of this year,” Landon said.
In addition, from an investment standpoint, “It’s always a good time of year to remember the importance of making contributions to your IRAs and to your 401(k)s. Might be a good time to give yourself a check up,” Landon said. “Make sure you are saving enough and that you are taking advantage of those deductions as well. So if you didn’t get your IRA contributions in for 2017, maybe it’s a good time to budget and start making those contributions on a monthly basis now so that you can take full advantage of those deductions moving forward.”
Those who need more time can file for an extension; that deadline is for Oct. 15. If you do not file, the IRS will take a penalty of five to 25 percent of the balance due for each month your return is late.
