Paying the IRS on the REAL Deadline.

[MineralMan]

April 15? Not me. I can't remember a year when I managed to file our 1040 and its many accessory forms on April 15. October 15 is tax day in my tiny household. We're always playing catch-up around here. Between my wife and I, we make enough money to get along OK, but just. So, the estimated payment dates sometimes go by without a check being sent. April comes and goes and we finally manage to tune our awareness to the upcoming October 15 deadline. So we manage to put away enough to pay the tax bill by October 15. Just.

We're both self-employed, and it seems like all the other self-employed people we know operate on that same weird, extension-driven fiscal year. It's how things go for the self-employed. There's always some emergency or vehicle breakdown or health issue that demands money just when it should have gone to pay the estimated taxes. No refunds. Ever. Always a big chunk of cash due on October 15.

Every year, we plan to not do that next year. Every year, we fail. So, we pay a modest penalty for not making estimated payments and we go about our business. And so it goes. The IRS's payday is October 15. The IRS doesn't seem to mind. We don't mind. It's all good.

As the nice lady at the local Post Office said to me, "We sure get a lot of these mailings to the IRS in October." I'll bet they do.

Caught up for another year, I remain,

Taxpaying MineralMan

[Frustratedlady]

1. Gotta send that to a friend who always aims for October.

She'll get a kick out of it and not feel like she's the only one filing late.

[TBF]

2. I always seem to file in Oct -

but I do make the estimated payments. Just can't get my act in gear to get everything collected by April for the CPA. He is very patient.

[MineralMan]

3. I do the taxes myself. It's easy.

Both of us work at home, and what we do costs nothing to produce. Our business expenses are almost nil, and we work at home. It's a simple tax situation. So I just do them myself.