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Millions of Americans were impacted by hurricanes in 2024. In light of the disaster, the IRS extended the tax deadline for some affected taxpayers in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas to May 1st. If you're one of them and want to make sure everything goes smoothly, we have Andy Phillips, H&R Block Vice President of the Tax Institute. Andy, good to see you here. Where can taxpayers find their extended deadline?

Sure. So, first, thank you for having me. And as you mentioned, you know, tax day is passed for the vast majority of Americans, but we had a lot of natural disasters in 2024 and early 2025. For folks impacted by those disasters, they may have an extended deadline. You referenced down in the Southeast, we have several states or portions of states that are extended at least until May 1st, so a couple of days from now. Uh, North Carolina gets a little longer until September. And then we have other areas like California, um, where, you know, folks impacted by the, uh, the fires that occurred, um, you know, not too long ago, have until October to file their 2025, or 2024 tax returns. And so the best place to go to determine if you, uh, you know, you may have an extended deadline is to go to the IRS website. They have a complete listing or hrblock.com. We can help you as well.

So if you are allowed to file late, what you should, what should you be aware of in that instance?

Absolutely. So the first thing is, you know, don't wait till that last second to do it, especially if you were impacted by the disaster. Maybe you had a casualty loss, meaning you had some loss to business property or your home or a vehicle that wasn't fully reimbursed by insurance, and you may be able to claim a casualty loss. In some instances, you may be able to get that money back quicker by filing a prior year amendment to get that money back or to claim that loss. Um, you may also need help reconstructing your records if you lost some of your paperwork. And so it's really important that people don't wait till the last minute to do that, but instead, you know, get ahead of it now, understand what benefits may be eligible to me and what else may I need to get together to file my tax return this year.

Shifting gears here. If you owed the IRS money this year, what should you do right now to make sure that that doesn't happen again next year?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, so one of the things I love to talk about during tax season is don't use that kind of tax, you know, preparation experience as just a look back on last year, but use it as an opportunity to make that plan going forward, um, to say, I want to get the best possible outcome next year when I go to file. If you haven't done that, I'm going to give you two ways you can adjust your withholdings or your taxes to get a different outcome next year. If you're an employee, you can update what's called your W-4 with your employer. That's what they use to determine how much tax to withhold, uh, to withhold from each of your paychecks. Now, if you're self-employed, you can adjust how much you make in quarterly estimated payments during the year. Again, to account for I've had life changes or I didn't like my outcome when I filed a few weeks ago, and I want to change that for next year. And here at H&R Block, we offer our clients a current, uh, a courtesy mid-year check to avoid any of those surprises. So, for instance, the W-4, it's kind of like a mini tax return. If you're confused by it, good opportunity to get help because then you have, you know, uh, an outcome that won't be a surprise when you go to file a little less than a year from now.