New Corporate Deadlines for the 2016 Tax Year

By Christopher Bertz, CPA

With the holidays safely behind us, it’s time to focus on 2017. In doing so, business owners should be keeping three new tax deadlines on their radar. Read on to find out what these business tax deadlines could mean for you.

Owners of the following entity types should be aware of new business tax deadlines:

• Partnership returns are now due March 15, 2017—a month earlier than last year.
• Calendar-year C Corporation returns have a later due date of April 15, 2017.

While pushing the deadline up a month for partnerships may not seem like a significant shift, it does require you to begin compiling your information earlier than usual. Ideally, you should submit your information to our office by January 31 to meet the earlier deadline.

 Why the change?

Congress decided to make the change to make it easier for individuals to file a timely return.  Now, the partnership tax deadline is the same as the S corporation deadline (also March 15), allowing individuals to receive the necessary Schedule K-1 tax form and file it by April 15.

 What if my return requires an extension?

If your return does need to be extended, there’s no need to worry. You may have heard that extended returns have a higher chance of being audited, but this is simply not true. There are no correlations between an extension and higher audit rates.

 Owners of all entity types should also pay attention to this new deadline:

• The IRS Form 1099-MISC filing deadline to the IRS has been moved up to January 31, 2017.

This new deadline is a month earlier than last year’s, so if you’re not careful this could sneak up on you. Make sure to file this form with the IRS and issue these to your contractors by the deadline. The IRS has said it’s going to start cracking down on penalties for late filings. These penalties can be as high as $500 per missed form.

 Take these deadlines seriously—the IRS does!

If you have questions or would like more information about these new deadlines, please don’t hesitate to call. While it’s tempting to brush aside these deadlines, it’s important to comply. The IRS can—and will—enforce penalties if you miss these. And that’s never a fun way to start a new year.