Welcome to The Deduction, Big Bird Accounting LLC’s weekly newsletter (written by Christopher Small, the founder). My goal here is simple – logical insights to save on taxes. Need help – let’s chat – https://bigbirdaccounting.com/contact

Happy Sunday! With tax season fast approaching I thought I’d take a moment to talk to you about why extending your tax filing for your 2024 taxes is a good idea. And I’ve got three reasons why. First, real quick, what do I mean when I say “extend your tax filing”? What I’m talking about doing is getting some extra time to file your taxes. If you are filing as an s-corp, you’ve got to file by March 15. For your individual taxes you’ve got to file by April 15. By filing an extension you can push those dates out to September and October, respectively. One important note – although you can extend your individual tax filing date (and you should) when you file your extension in April you will still need to pay your estimated income tax for 2024. Okay, here are three reasons you should extend. #1. It gives your CPA time to do it right. There is always a scramble from January 1 to April 15 to get everything documented, prepared, and filed. Sometimes institutions send out tax forms late. Sometimes you just get information to the CPA late (I know this isn’t your biggest priority). And sometimes you’re CPA just gets backed up. No matter the case, by extending for 6 months you get A LOT of time to make sure things are correct. Use that time. #2. It actually makes you LESS likely to get audited. Did you know that audits are done on a first in, first out basis? What I mean is, there is a certain number of audits the IRS wants to do every as a matter of course. And they don’t want to wait until October to get started. So, they start the random auditing as soon as returns start rolling in – which means your return filed early is in some ways MORE likely to get chosen for audit. #3. We have no idea what’s going to happen to the IRS this year. No matter your political leanings, there is one thing we can all agree on – there is no such thing as the status quo in the U.S. government in 2025. Many things are changing. Many proposals are being made. And extending your tax filings gives a little extra time for those things to shake out and for you to take advantage of any opportunities that arise. Hope this helps. Extend! Extend! Extend! Cheers, Christopher Small Big Bird Accounting LLC PS – we love referrals, so if you have law firm owner friends looking for help with books and tax strategy, let them know about us!