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Monday, December 28, 2015

Top Ten Items of Tax Policy Interest for 2015 - #7

Continuing with my list of ten news items and activities from 2015 that I think have particular tax policy relevance.  Today, for number 7 is the change in due dates starting with 2016 returns of Form 1120, 1065, FBAR and a few others. 

The due date proposal has been around for some time. It was even included in Congressman Camp's Tax Reform Act of 2014 (H.R. 1, 113rd Congress).  The changes were advocated by the AICPA (see this 10/19/15 Tax Insider article by Eileen Sherr for more on that). For a nice summary of the due date changes, see this AICPA due date chart (practitioners - I encourage you to print this one out as it will help you prepare for the change. Also during the upcoming filing season, think about what would be different if the change were effective for 2015 returns so you can get a sense of what will be different in terms of workflow for 2016)..

I think this is an important policy change as it brings some logic into the return filing system.  For example, the change makes partnership returns due one month earlier and C corporation returns due one month later. This makes sense because no one needs the C corp information, but millions of partners wait for the partnership information so they can get their returns filed.

The changes also pushes out the extended due date for Form 1041 from September 15 to September 30.  That might be a big help for many practitioners with little, if any, disruption for the tax system as a whole.

So, it is nice to see this logical change occur and that it not have to wait for a big tax reform proposal for it to occur.

What do you think?

My list so far of news and activities of 2015 with tax policy relevance (no ranking involved):

  1. Congress can alter our tax system via a lot of non-tax bills - here
  2. IRS funding challenges - here 
  3. Justice Kennedy called for a review of the 1992 Quill decision - here 
  4. IRS disagreeing with a court decision via a proposed regulation - here 
  5. Why not let the Internet Tax Freedom Act just expire - here
  6. A growing amount of non-binding "guidance" from the IRS - here

1 comment:

Mark Thompson said...

Looking forward to the rest of your list!