Tag Archives: pay taxes online

COVID-19 Financial Relief, Illinois, IRS, Tips

How To Cancel Or Reschedule Illinois 2020 Income Tax Return Electronic Payment

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As I’m sure you’re aware, the Illinois Department of Revenue (IDOR) has extended the due date for individual tax filings (but not corporate or estimated taxes) to coincide with the new IRS due date of May 17, 2021.

However, many have already filed their taxes and have scheduled their tax payments to be direct-debited on April 15th. IDOR has released instructions for how to move these payments to the new due date.

From the Illinois Department of Revenue on March 26, 2021:

If you scheduled an electronic payment for 2020 income taxes to be paid on or before April 15, 2021, your payment will not automatically be rescheduled to May 17, 2021. If you do nothing, the payment will be made on the date you chose.

If the payment has not been processed, you may be able to cancel or reschedule it. You must cancel or reschedule the payment before its scheduled date.

Here is information on how to cancel and reschedule your payment:

  • If you scheduled a payment through MyTax Illinois, you can login to your account and cancel any pending payment. If you made your payment through the non-login option, you can use Retrieve Saved or Submitted Request to view and withdraw any pending future payment using the email address and confirmation code associated with your payment. For specific instructions, see Cancel a MyTax Illinois Payment.
  • If you scheduled a payment through a credit card or your bank, you must contact your financial institution to stop the payment. (financial institution stop payment fees may apply.)
  • If you scheduled a payment through a tax professional or using tax preparation software, you may cancel your payment or request the date be changed. You must email us at REV.TaxPay@illinois.gov to make a payment cancellation no later than 11:59 p.m. CT two business days prior to the scheduled payment date and include ALL of the following information:
    1. Your first and last name or your company name if you are a business
    2. Identification number:
      • For individuals, last four of your social security number (SSN) or your Illinois PIN
    3. Mailing address and phone number
    4. Specify if you are requesting to Cancel or Reschedule your payment
    5. Exact dollar amount of your original payment
    6. Date the original payment was scheduled to be paid (Month, Day, and Year)
    7. If rescheduling, you must include the new date to which the payment will be changed.

Note: Checks and money orders are cashed upon receipt. We are unable to stop these transactions, therefore your check or money order will be cashed. You may contact your financial institution for more information regarding your options.

If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

Illinois, IRS

IRS & Illinois Open Tax Season On February 12

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Just a confirmation that both the IRS and the Illinois Department of Revenue have delayed the start of tax filing season to the same date — February 12, 2021.

The IRS announced January 15th that they will begin accepting and processing 2020 tax year returns later than usual.

The February 12 start date for individual tax return filers allows the IRS time to do additional programming and testing of IRS systems following the December 27 tax law changes that provided a second round of Economic Impact Payments and other benefits. This programming work is critical to ensuring IRS systems run smoothly. If filing season were opened without the correct programming in place, then there could be a delay in issuing refunds to taxpayers. These changes ensure that eligible people will receive any remaining stimulus money as a Recovery Rebate Credit when they file their 2020 tax return.

On January 26th, the Illinois Department of Revenue (IDOR) announced that it will begin accepting 2020 state individual income tax returns on the same date that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) begins accepting federal individual income tax returns, Friday, February 12th.

To speed refunds during the pandemic, both the IRS and IDOR urge taxpayers to file electronically with direct deposit. Due to limited staffing at both agencies, paper filings are taking many months to be processed. If you have a balance due, be sure to pay it online to avoid issues with paper checks sitting unopened in the mailroom.

As for whether tax season will be extended, the current answer from both agencies is: no. But IRS Commissioner Rettig did mention recently that a third round of stimulus checks might make hitting the April 15th deadline impossible. We shall see — tax professionals are mixed about the idea.

It will be a challenging season, to be sure. See my colleague Claudia Hill’s Forbes article for her take on “Top Ten Tax Season Concerns”.

If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. This allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

IRS, Tips

IRS Confirms July 15 Tax Deadline

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The IRS confirmed in a press release that the July 15th due date for filing will remain as-is, with no further changes.

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin had said last week that he hadn’t ruled out moving the deadline again, but this newest announcement makes it clear that July 15th is the new April 15th.

Taxpayers who can’t meet the July 15 due date can request an automatic extension of time to file — it’s a six-month extension from the original filing date of April 15 (not the extended due date), which means it will extend the time to file to October 15, 2020.

The IRS offers a plethora of filing and payment options and reminds folks that filing an extension gets you more time to file your return, but not to pay any balance due. If you think you’ll have a balance due, I recommend you work with a professional to calculate what it might be, and submit payment with your extension, to avoid penalties and interest on late payment.

If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. This allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

Illinois, IRS, Tips

How to Pay Quarterly Estimated Taxes Online – IRS & IL DoR

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UPDATED 12/31/2021: Due to a new law, Illinois S-Corps and Partnerships should generally now pay quarterly IL state (not federal) taxes through the business, rather than personally. This post below is about how to pay IRS and IL taxes personally; here’s how to make IL business tax payments.

There are multiple options for paying personal quarterly estimated taxes. You can a) have your tax preparer create vouchers for you, that you then print and mail with a check; b) prepare your own vouchers for the IRS and IL DoR; c) pay online.

As of March 2020, federal and state agencies and the Postal Service are having so many challenges with paper-mailed checks and vouchers that we are encouraging everyone to make any tax payments online.

If you want to pay online, the easiest way to do this is to use IRS Direct Pay and IDOR MyTaxIllinois. Paying online offers confirmation that the payment made it to the agency, reducing the chance of issues down the road, especially if the check is lost in the mail or routed incorrectly in the processing department. It also allows taxpayers to be very clear about what type of tax and tax period are being submitted, again eliminating confusion on the part of the agency and preventing future problems.

If you are paying online, I recommend making payments one day before the due dates, as sometimes it takes overnight for the agencies’ systems to process payments. The funds are usually pulled from your bank account the same day or one day later, so there is very little wiggle room.

You do not have to have an account with either the IRS or IL DoR in order to make payments using these methods.

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

For the IRS, once you get to the site, select the following options (noted in the screen shot below) — 1) the reason for the payment, 2) the form you would be mailing in if you weren’t doing this online, and 3) the year to which the payment should apply… for example, for 4th-quarter 2019 personal estimated taxes, you’d select the following:

Settings for IRS Direct Pay

Here’s a nice little video that walks you through the process of verifying your identity.

Illinois Department of Revenue (IDOR)

For the IDOR, go to the MyTax Illinois site (if you already have an account for sales taxes or another reason — do not log in, unless you are making business tax payments), and then click the “> Make an IL-1040, IL-1040-ES, or IL-505-I payment” link (see print screen below).

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Then follow the instructions for making a quarterly estimated tax payment; it will make you enter your personal information (SSN, etc.) and ask you what kind of tax payment you wish to make.

It may require you to enter your driver’s license information or your AGI from a past tax return to confirm identity and get your IL-PIN.

Then it will take you to a Payment Information page.

You’ll want to select “IL-1040 Estimated Payment” and enter your tax year. Make sure it’s for the correct year and quarter — this is very important. The example below is for the fourth quarter of 2021.

Then, enter your payment information and click the Submit button.

It will require you to enter and confirm your email address before clicking OK.

Make sure to print the confirmation screen, even though they will send you an email receipt — every once-in-a-while IDOR fails to push the request through, and the amount is not debited or recorded. If you have the print-screen, you can prove you attempted to pay it on-time and that the mistake was theirs.

It will also include a confirmation code, the date/time of the request, the reporting period and amount, and bank withdrawal information. You can click “Printable Confirmation” or just print the webpage to pdf.

Please make sure to note how much you paid to each agency and on which dates — and let your tax preparer know this information as well. Securely uploading copies of the final confirmation screen to your tax preparer or bookkeeper is a great practice, so they can easily store the info in your file.

If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.