Whether you’ve got your own nurse practitioner business or other side income, sometimes it’s challenging to file your taxes on time. After all, running a successful business takes a lot of hard work and planning, and frankly paying your taxes is likely the last thing on your mind.
Regardless, it’s still something that has to get done before April 18th this year or else there will be consequences. For starters, the IRS charges a penalty of 5% on the unpaid tax for each month your payment is late (up to a max of 25%). Additionally, if your business is structured as an S-Corporation or a partnership, then you will be penalized based on the number of partners or shareholders you have, as well as the number of months your tax filing is late.
The good news is that’s a fairly easy way to avoid all of this: file for an extension. An extension will give most businesses at least six months (until October 15) to properly finalize all of their paperwork and submit it for review to the IRS. (Note that partnerships only have five months until September 15.)
If you’d like to file an extension for your business, then here’s what to do:
- Fill out IRS form 7004. You can find form 7004 on the IRS website here. This is your official notification requesting an automatic extension from the IRS. This form must be filed before the April 18th deadline. Note that the IRS does not notify you when they approve the extension request. They will only tell you if you’ve been denied.
- Make a payment. Even though you’re filing for an existential, the IRS doesn’t want to wait to collect what it’s owed. Therefore, you must also make a good faith estimate of how much tax you owe and submit it before the April 18th deadline. This amount does not need to be exact but it should be reasonably close. Later on, when you get all of your paperwork together and finalize the numbers, you can adjust the payment as necessary.
Remember: It’s not worth paying a late penalty over nothing. Estimate how much you owe, file the form, and buy yourself some extra time as needed.
One Response
I often advise everyone who is interested, if you have any good reasons why you are not able to pay tax, you can contact your local tax office and submit an application to defer your taxes for the required period, during which you can additionally pay everything. Without facing fines and other censures from the side of the taxation system