By Karen Hube

Still haven't filed your tax return?

As of April 4, more than one-third of the 163 million individual taxpayers expected to file a 2024 tax return still hadn't gotten around to it, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

If you are among the laggards fretting about the April 15 deadline, at this point you may be better off filing for a deadline extension to Oct. 15, says Mike Lambrakis, chief investment officer at Ares Financial Consulting.

"Rushing tends to lead to errors, causing potential processing delays and headaches with the IRS," Lambrakis says. "Filing an extension is quick, easy and carries no negative implications."

An extension gives you more time to pull your paperwork together, crunch your numbers and submit your tax return, but you still must pay what you owe by April 15.

All taxpayers are granted an extension simply by filing a Form 4868 no later than the April 15 deadline. The IRS doesn't need to know your reasons for wanting more time.

Don't take the April 15 deadline lightly, even if you are filing for an extension.

"The penalty for failing to file on time is 10 times the penalty for just failing to pay on time," says Andy Phillips, vice president of the Tax Institute at H&R Block.

If you don't file your tax return or a Form 4868 by April 15, failure-to-file penalties kick in at a rate of 5% of what you owe per month, up to 25%.

If you don't pay your taxes by April 15, you face a 0.5% monthly penalty on what you still owe, capped at 25%. The IRS also charges 7% annual interest on underpayments.

If you don't know exactly how much you owe, get as close as you can.

The IRS has a safe-harbor rule: if you pay at least 90% of 2024's tax liability by April 15, you will avoid penalties for underpayment.

You may already qualify for an automatic extension if you live in an area impacted by fires, floods, hurricanes or other natural disasters.

Taxpayers who live in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina have an automatic extension to May 1 to both file and pay their taxes. People who live in certain municipalities and counties in Alaska, New Mexico, Tennessee and Virginia also are eligible for the May 1 deadline.

For these folks, extensions can be granted to Oct. 15 to file your taxes, but not to pay, if you file the Form 4868 by May 1. The form can be filed electronically until April 15; after that it must be sent on paper by mail.

Three additional states have fall deadlines to file and pay 2024 taxes.

Taxpayers in Los Angeles County, Calif., have automatic extensions until Oct. 15 to file and pay, because of the wildfires.

Taxpayers in Kentucky and in 12 counties in West Virginia have until Nov. 3 to file and pay.

The disaster-related extensions can provide much-needed relief, but many choose to get their taxes buttoned up and behind them as soon as possible, says Mike Celka, an accountant at Bern Butler Capilouto & Massey. "Our clients want it done and over with by April 15 -- and I've been working 80 hours a week so, so do I."

For all tax matters, accountants strongly urge taxpayers to avoid submitting paper forms through the mail to the IRS.

Due to staffing shortages, the agency has a track record of long delays in processing paper forms and sometimes losing documents in the shuffle. A bout of hiring to improve such problems over the past couple of years was recently undone by massive staff cuts enacted by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a new entity created by President Donald Trump.

While DOGE was ordered in federal court to hire back 7,000 agents who lost their jobs in February, further cuts at the agency have been under way.

The bottom line for taxpayers: "Filing anything by paper is certainly problematic," says Parag Patel, a tax attorney in Clark, N.J. "I strongly recommend to my clients to avoid any paper filing and file electronically."

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April 15, 2025 08:37 ET (12:37 GMT)

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