April 15 is one day of the year.

The return gets built.

You send what you have. We tell you what is missing, which is usually two things and rarely the two you expected. Documents go to one place in the client portal and stay there, so you can see what is still outstanding without having to ask.

The return is prepared, then read against last year before anyone signs it. The fastest way to find a mistake is to notice that something moved and nobody can say why. Then we go through it with you, and it is filed after that conversation rather than before it.

March 15

Partnership and S corporation returns are due. IRC §6072(b)

April 15

Individual returns are due, and the first required installment for the year now running falls the same day. IRC §6072(a) · §6654(c)

The season does not end on the 15th.

An extension on an individual return buys six months to file. It does not buy six months to pay, and the Code is unusually blunt about it: the tax is due at the time fixed for filing the return, determined without regard to any extension. Interest runs from April either way. The late-payment penalty is the part people can still avoid, and the rule for avoiding it is arithmetic rather than argument: pay at least 90% of what you will owe by the original date, settle the rest with the return, and reasonable cause is presumed for the extension period.

Notices arrive on their own schedule, not on yours, and one answered properly is almost always cheaper than one left alone. Where a matter has to be taken up with the IRS directly, an Enrolled Agent may practice before it. The credential is federal, so it does not stop at a state line.

Six months

Automatic extension of time to file an individual return. Partnerships and corporations have their own. Treas. Reg. §1.6081-4(a)

Still April 15

Payment is due at the time fixed for filing, without regard to any extension. IRC §6151(a)

90%

Paid by the original date, with the balance remitted on filing, presumes reasonable cause for the extension period. Treas. Reg. §301.6651-1(c)(3)

Practice

An Enrolled Agent in good standing may practice before the IRS. 31 CFR §10.3(c)

Half a year of real numbers, and time to act on them.

There are four required installments, and the second one lands in June, two months after the first. That proximity is why it is the one that gets missed: April has only just finished and nothing about June feels like a tax month.

What you pay does not have to be a guess at a year that is only half over. The statute lets the year be measured against the last one instead, which for most owners is the calmer way to do it and the reason a surprise in April is usually avoidable rather than bad luck.

This is also where planning is worth the most, and it is why the conversation is not left until December. Half the year has actually happened, so a decision is measured against numbers rather than a forecast. And anything that has to run through payroll for the remainder of the year — reasonable compensation above all — still has months of payroll left to run through. The same decision taken in the last week of December has one run to work with, if that.

June 15

Second required installment. IRC §6654(c)

September 15

Third required installment. IRC §6654(c)

100%

Of the prior year's tax is one of the two safe harbors. IRC §6654(d)(1)(B)

110%

Instead, where prior-year AGI was over $150,000, or over $75,000 filing separately. IRC §6654(d)(1)(C)

The months that change next April.

Entity choice. Reasonable compensation. When a distribution lands, and whether equipment is bought this year or next. These are the decisions that actually move a number, and nearly all of them stop being available on December 31.

A return prepared in March can only report what December already decided. So this quarter is a deadline rather than a starting point: what opened in the summer gets confirmed here, and whatever is still open has weeks left rather than months. That is the argument for planning being scheduled across the year instead of squeezed in once the return is already open.

October 15

Extended individual returns are due. Treas. Reg. §1.6081-4(a)

December 31

The taxable year closes, and with it most of what could still have changed it. IRC §441(a), (b)

January 15

Fourth required installment, for the year just ended. IRC §6654(c)