Moving Forward

No matter how big tax filing time really is for us here, we understand that it’s not everyone’s favorite. And it becomes a little less fun for everyone (ourselves included) when there is news that says the season could still be thrown for a loop.

That occurred last week when the House of Representatives passed a tax bill with various credits (the biggest one probably being beefing up the Child Tax Credit) that would be in effect for tax years 2023 through 2025. So yes, that’s tax year 2023, the one that we are currently in the midst of filing season for. There are also some business tax benefits involved, but exactly what is in the bill is not what I want to discuss here.

First, although this bill passed with bipartisan support in the House, it is already running into significant pushback in the Senate. So the best-case scenario here is that even if it is eventually signed into law, it is not going to happen that quickly. There is no reason then to push off your tax-filing plans.  This would only add deadline weight for something that could possibly not even come to pass.

Second, if you file early, it is not as if you are going to miss out on any new credits. When legislation has been passed on this sort of timeline in the past, it is applied retroactively, so you will still be able to receive the full value.

And finally, what is in this bill are things that can only possibly benefit taxpayers. Nothing is set up so that you would pay now and then still just owe more taxes in the future. So for planning purposes, whatever you do now would be a worst-case scenario. And those are always better to plan for than hoping for some eventual relief.

So overall, we are now in February, the filing season’s full picture may not yet be completely in focus, but the best plan now is still to move forward with filing as fast as possible. For after all, tax filing time is big for us here, it only gets bigger as we go along, so the sooner we can act together, the sooner we can get things wrapped up.

Even if there are later adjustments.

Warmly,

Josh Bousquet
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