Most everyone knows the story of Peter Pan originally written by Scottish novelist J.M. Barrie and made famous by Disney and stage productions. Peter Pan is the leader of the Lost Boys who live in Neverland. No…the picture below is not me in green tights and those saluting are not our hard working staff of accountants and client administrators.
Let me give you a brief glimpse into life at our Redlands CPA firm over the next month. We call it Dallyland. Dallyland is a magical place where we complete any remaining individual income tax returns and efile the forms by October 15th for clients that have dallied until close to the final deadline.
In some cases most of the work has been completed and we are just waiting on a few pieces of tax data to finalize the returns. We have some clients where we completed the returns a while back but they believe that filing near the extended deadline decreases their changes of an audit. I do not feel there’s a higher or lower chance of being audited on extended returns but I will not disregard their belief.
The rest of the group are those folks that have put off compiling their tax information until the very last moment. Sometimes the reason is a one-time occurrence (family, health or job issues). We also have our group of chronic procrastinators. I love these clients because they help spread out our work away from tax season. With proper planning and sufficient tax paid by April 15th, it’s OK to file by October 15th without penalty.
If you are chronic procrastinator, you don’t need a support group. You need a CPA firm that will make best use of your choice of timing and make your life less taxing. Just make sure that your tax return is completed and filed in Dallyland and not in Neverland!