Self‑employed? Your extended return is due October 15.

No. An extension is a routine, automatic request, and millions of taxpayers file one every year. It gives you until October 15 to file the return itself. The one thing it does not do is extend the time to pay: if you owed tax, that was due on the original spring deadline, and interest and a failure-to-pay penalty may have been accruing since then. Filing on time in October keeps the much larger failure-to-file penalty off the table.

Nothing. Preparing and e-filing your extended Form 1040 with us costs $0 — there is no filing fee, no per-form fee, no charge for creating an account, and nothing is deducted from your refund. We never ask for card details. Any tax you owe the IRS is separate and is paid directly to the IRS, not to us.

File anyway. The penalty for not filing is generally ten times the monthly penalty for not paying, so filing on time is the single most effective thing you can do to limit what you owe. Once the return is filed, the IRS offers payment options — including short-term extensions to pay and longer instalment agreements — and we can talk you through which fits your situation.

Yes. We prepare federal returns for clients anywhere in the United States, and the practice is 100% virtual — documents are uploaded through this site and everything else happens by phone, email or video. State income tax rules differ from state to state, so tell us which state you file in when you register and we will confirm what your state return needs before we start.

Uploads travel over an encrypted HTTPS connection, and each document is encrypted again before it is stored, with a key unique to that file. Your documents are visible only to you and to your CPA, and are never sold or shared with third parties for marketing. Your account is protected by a password you choose, repeated failed sign-in attempts lock the account, and the portal signs you out automatically after a period of inactivity. The Privacy Policy describes in full how your information is handled.

It is not too late. Returns can be filed after the deadline, and prior-year returns can be brought current. Penalties generally stop growing once a return is filed, and if you are due a refund there is usually no failure-to-file penalty at all — though the window to claim a refund does close eventually (generally three years from the original due date). If you have several unfiled years, say so when you register and we will work out the order to tackle them in.