Taxpreparer filing deadlines: IRS dates, eight states

What to take away

The federal dates that anchor every practice calendar

The IRS publishes the core due dates and the extension mechanics behind them. Treat when to file as the source of record rather than a list copied from last year's template.

The IRS page on when to file is the page to send a client who asks why the return is not finished. It gives April 15, 2026 for calendar-year filers and the 15th day of the fourth month after the fiscal year ends for fiscal-year filers, and explains the automatic 6-month extension on Form 4868, adding that an extension of time to file is not an extension of time to pay.

Business returns, trusts and estates request their extension on Form 7004, and exempt organizations use Form 8868. When April 15 falls on a weekend or on Emancipation Day in the District of Columbia, the individual due date rolls to the next business day. Corporate returns follow the same weekend rule. March 15 shifts less often, which is exactly why a fiscal-year entity client slips past a preparer who stopped checking.

Estimated payments and payroll deposits

The individual calendar does not end in April. Four estimated payment dates run across the year, and a practice tracking only annual returns misses the June and September installments that keep clients out of underpayment penalties.

Payroll clients add a monthly or semiweekly deposit schedule on top of that. Those deposits are not income tax deadlines, but they consume the same staff hours in the same weeks. A calendar that ignores them overbooks January and April.

Information returns land first

W-2 and 1099 forms go to recipients in January and to the Social Security Administration or the IRS shortly after. Those dates fall before the individual season peaks, which makes January the real start of the year for many practices.

A new practice learns this the hard way. The compliance checklist for new owners covers the registrations and authorizations that must be in place before any of these filings go out under your firm's name.

Eight states that decide how a national practice plans

State deadlines are where a national practice gets complicated. These eight cover a large share of the client base, and the authority named for each is the one to consult when a state date or rule is unclear.

California

The California Franchise Tax Board administers personal and corporate income tax. Individual returns generally follow the federal April date, and the Board grants an automatic extension to October 15 for individuals.

California is not a mirror of the federal system. It has its own forms, its own e-file mandate thresholds, and its own treatment of items that diverge from federal law. File the federal return and assume the state follows, and you produce a wrong state return.

Entity clients carry an additional obligation. The annual minimum franchise tax is due regardless of income, separate from the return itself.

New York

The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance publishes an income tax filing resource center with due dates and procedures. Individual returns align with the federal April date, and the state extension moves the filing date but not the payment date.

New York City residents file a separate city personal income tax return. Out-of-state preparers miss it routinely. A client in one of the boroughs may need both returns.

Texas

Texas levies no individual income tax. A Texas individual file ends at the federal return: no state return, no state extension, no state refund to track.

The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts does administer a franchise tax on most business entities. A Texas practice with entity clients still has a state date to track, but it is a business tax: the annual franchise tax report is due May 15, and if May 15 falls on a weekend or holiday, the due date is the next business day.

Confirm residency dates when a client moves to Texas from an income tax state. Part-year residency can create a filing obligation that survives the move.

Florida

Florida has no personal income tax. The Florida Department of Revenue levies a corporate income tax, and businesses may owe other state taxes on their own schedules.

Illinois

The Illinois Department of Revenue administers individual income tax. The state return follows the federal due date, and Illinois grants an automatic six-month extension that matches the federal period.

Georgia

The Georgia Department of Revenue tracks the federal April date for individuals and offers an automatic extension to filers who hold a federal extension.

Arizona

The Arizona Department of Revenue aligns its individual due date with the federal calendar and makes an automatic extension available.

Washington

Washington has no personal income tax, but it is not a state where the file simply closes. The Department of Revenue levies a business and occupation tax on gross receipts, and the state operates a capital gains excise tax on certain high-income individuals.

That excise tax is the item most likely to surprise a preparer who treats Washington as a no-income-tax state and stops looking. It carries its own return and its own due date. The Department of Revenue's capital gains guidance says individuals must file the capital gains tax return by the same day the federal income tax return is due, that an extension must be requested electronically through My DOR on or before April 15 and requires a federal filing extension, and that a filing extension does not extend the due date for payment.

Where state authorities diverge from the IRS schedule

The federal calendar is a template, not a rule states adopt wholesale. Divergence shows up in four places: the due date, the extension length, the payment rule, and the residency and sourcing rules that decide who files at all.

Due dates that do not match

Most income tax states align their individual due date with the federal one, but alignment is a convention. When the federal date shifts for a weekend or a District of Columbia holiday, states decide independently whether to follow.

Some states tie their date to the federal date by statute, so the shift happens automatically. Others fix a date in their own code, which means a state return can be due on a day the federal return is not. Read each state's own notice.

Extension rules that differ

An extension to file is not an extension to pay. This is the most common client misunderstanding of the season. Every state that grants an extension grants it for the filing, and every one still expects payment by the original due date.

Length varies. Some states match the federal six months, some grant five, and some grant six only when a federal extension is attached. A few require a separate state extension form rather than accepting the federal one.

Entity-level elections

Pass-through entity taxes spread across many states as a workaround for the federal state and local tax deduction cap. Where a state has one, the entity files and pays at the entity level, and owners take a credit or deduction on their individual returns.

That adds a state filing date unrelated to the owners' individual returns. It also adds an election deadline, often earlier than the return and easy to miss entirely.

Residency and sourcing

Remote work pushed residency and sourcing questions to the front of the state return. A client who lives in one state and works for an employer in another may owe tax in both, and the credit for taxes paid to another state does not always close the gap.

This is where the calendar carries a note rather than a date. The note reminds the preparer to ask the residency question. The answer decides which state returns get prepared.

Building the calendar in a fixed sequence

A calendar built in January and abandoned in March is not a calendar. Start from the dates that cannot move and work outward to the ones that can.

The external deadline is not the date the work is due. It is the date the work must already be finished, reviewed, signed and transmitted. That gap is the one practices skip.

Work backward from the April date

Subtract from the individual due date. Client documents need to be in hand two to three weeks ahead, review needs a week, and signature and payment need several days. For a return filed in mid April, the real internal deadline lands in late March.

For a practice with several hundred individual returns, the internal deadline is not one date. It is a rolling schedule, because the work cannot all be reviewed in the same week.

Client-facing dates fix the actual cause

Most late returns are late because documents arrived late, not because the preparer ran out of time. A calendar that carries a document request date and a reminder date addresses the cause rather than the symptom.

Scheduling so that document collection happens before the crunch is its own discipline. The methods to keep tax preparation jobs on time belong in the calendar, not in case-by-case handling.

Match the calendar to how work actually moves

A calendar is a model of how work flows through a tax preparation business. If the model does not match the way returns move from intake to filing, staff ignore it by the second week of February.

So the calendar should reflect your intake process, your review layers and your signature method. A practice that collects documents digitally and signs electronically compresses the internal timeline. One that still meets clients in person cannot.

E-file cutoffs, paper addresses and authorizations

E-file changed the practical deadline for most returns. The legal due date is unchanged, but the date a preparer can actually transmit is earlier, and that gap is where late filings come from.

The IRS filing hub covers return filing options and the e-file basics that govern transmission, including the authorizations a preparer needs to file for a client. Those authorizations are not automatic and take time to obtain.

Cutoffs and rejections

Software providers set their own transmission cutoffs, usually a day or more before the legal deadline. Some states run their own e-file systems with separate cutoffs and separate acknowledgment timelines.

A rejected return adds a full cycle. Transmit on the last day and get rejected for a name or Social Security number mismatch, and there may be no time to correct and retransmit before the deadline passes.

That is the argument for an internal cutoff several days early, and for validating client data at intake rather than at transmission.

Paper returns still exist

Some returns cannot be e-filed, some clients refuse, and some situations require attachments the e-file system will not accept.

Paper returns go to different addresses by return type and, for individuals, by the taxpayer's state. Those addresses change. An address pulled from a prior year's software template can send a return to the wrong campus.

Paper returns need a postmark, not a transmission timestamp. A return mailed on the due date but postmarked the next day is late.

Authorizations gate the filing

Preparers need a Preparer Tax Identification Number, and the IRS Tax Pro Account manages authorizations and client transcripts. Circular 230 sets the practice standards for anyone practicing before the agency. For questions about how those standards apply to your firm, consult a licensed attorney or the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility.

None of that is a filing deadline, but all of it gates the filing. A missing authorization in April is a filing problem, and it is better found in December.

The daily rhythm behind the dates

Calendar dates only matter if the daily work supports them. A daily operating checklist keeps intake, review and transmission moving so no return waits on a decision nobody made.

Disaster postponements reset the calendar

Disaster relief is the one part of the calendar that cannot be planned. The IRS announces postponements for taxpayers in federally declared disaster areas, moving filing and payment deadlines for the affected population.

The IRS posts those announcements on its tax relief in disaster situations page. Check it during the season rather than waiting for a client to mention it, because relief often covers a whole county or state.

How the relief works

A typical postponement pushes the deadline for affected taxpayers several months later and usually covers both filing and payment. Relief generally applies automatically to taxpayers in the covered area, with no request required.

Relief can also reach taxpayers whose records sit in the covered area even if they live elsewhere. That is a factual question worth documenting when a client claims it.

What it does to capacity

Postponement does not remove the work. It moves the work into a period that was already full. A practice with clients in a declared area should treat the postponed date as a new deadline and re-plan capacity rather than banking the relief as extra time.

There is also a records problem. A client in a disaster area may lose documents, and the return may have to be built from transcripts and reconstructed records. That takes longer than a normal return, not less.

State relief runs on its own timetable

States often announce relief that follows a federal declaration, but not on the same schedule. A state postponement may arrive days after the federal one, or not at all.

Carry a note to check both the federal announcement and each affected state's announcement before deciding a client's deadline has moved.

Staffing the four peaks

Plan for one peak and staff for one peak, and the practice is overwhelmed three times a year.

Different peaks need different skills

Entity returns and individual returns demand different strengths, and the same preparer may not be efficient at both. If March is entity-heavy, the March staffing plan should not mirror April's.

Extension work is often harder than original work, because returns that go on extension usually carry missing documents or unusual items. Staffing extension season with the least experienced preparers is a common mistake.

Numbers that predict overload

A practice that only counts completed returns learns about overload after it happens. Returns in progress, documents outstanding, and average days from intake to filing give an early signal.

The metrics worth the monthly effort to measure every month include turnaround time and the count of returns waiting on client documents. Both predict the April crunch well before April.

Review is the bottleneck

Review is the constraint in most practices, because the owner or a few senior staff do it. Adding preparers without adding review capacity does not raise throughput.

Show review capacity on the calendar as a limit, with a planned number of returns per reviewer per week. When the plan exceeds that number, extend more returns early rather than reviewing faster.

Tell clients the dates in January

Clients plan around the dates they are told. A practice that says documents are due by March 1 collects more on time than one that asks in late March.

That communication belongs to the calendar, not beside it. Build the client-facing dates and the internal dates in one sequence, so the promise made to the client is achievable by the staff doing the work.

Common questions

Do all states follow the federal April 15 due date?

No. Many income tax states align their individual due date with the federal date, but alignment is a convention rather than a rule. States decide independently whether to follow a federal shift, and some fix their own date in statute.

Does an extension to file extend the time to pay?

No. An extension moves the filing date only. Payment is still due by the original deadline, and interest and penalties accrue on unpaid balances from that date. Confirm current rules with the IRS or the state authority.

Which of the eight states have no individual income tax?

Texas, Florida and Washington levy no personal income tax on wages. Washington does impose a capital gains excise tax on certain high-income individuals, and all three states tax businesses in some form.

How early should a preparer file before the deadline?

Several days before the legal date at minimum. E-file cutoffs come earlier, and a rejected return needs time to correct and retransmit. Validate names and Social Security numbers at intake so rejections surface early.

What happens to deadlines for clients in a disaster area?

The IRS postpones filing and payment deadlines for taxpayers in federally declared disaster areas, and the relief generally applies automatically. States may announce their own relief on a different timetable, so check both.