With Tax Day only five days away, here’s how you can apply for a tax return extension, giving you more time to file your returns.
Why It Matters
If you’re unable to file your 2024 federal income tax return by the standard deadline of April 15, 2025, you risk facing penalties and interest on any unpaid taxes.
The traditional penalty for an individual who has not filed their taxes by the deadline is 5 percent of the tax due for each month the return is late. The penalty accrues up to a maximum of 25 percent.
However, the IRS allows you to request an extension, giving you more time to submit your return and avoid the late-filing penalties.
What To Know
If you need more time to gather documents or you need professional advice, the extension process could ease a lot of stress during tax season.
It’s important to remember that a tax extension is not an extension on the time to pay your taxes, but an extension on the time to file your returns.
To avoid a penalty, estimate and pay any owed taxes by April 15, 2025, and file an extension before the deadline to have more time to sort out the paperwork.
Best Ways To Apply for a Tax Extension
Extensions allow you to have an additional six months to file your taxes, pushing the deadline to October 15, 2025. Individuals, self-employed workers and businesses can all apply for a tax extension.
To apply for an extension, one option is to file an extension electronically through the IRS Free File system, an option available to all taxpayers.
A Form 4868 also allows you to file for an extension, and can be done either online with an IRS e-filing partner, by mail, or with a tax professional.
You can also do it while paying for your taxes. First, you would pay what you owe using an online payment option, such as by debit card, credit card or digital wallet or from your bank account or IRS account as well as a number of other options.
During the process of paying your taxes through one of these means, there is a box you can tick to indicate that you are also seeking to apply for an extension.
There is no separate form you need to file for an extension in this case, and you will receive a confirmation number of your extension in your records.
Who Gets Automatic Tax Extensions?
U.S. citizens or resident aliens—the term given to those who are foreign-born U.S. residents—who are living outside of the U.S. and Puerto Rico on the regular due date of their tax return receive an automatic extension of two months.
Should they need more time to file their taxes, they can also apply for an additional extension if they complete Form 4868.
Those in the military on duty outside of the U.S. and Puerto Rico also receive an automatic two-month extension.
Additionally, those who have been affected by “disaster situations” are also eligible for automatic extensions.
In 2025, these include victims of the landslides, flooding and severe storms in Kentucky and victims of the California wildfires.
What People Are Saying
Jay A. Soled, professor and chair of the Department of Accounting and Information Systems at Rutgers Business School, New Jersey, previously told Newsweek: “Even with the tax-filing extension, interest will apply to any 2024 tax payments received after April 15. This means that unpaid tax-year 2024 tax balances will begin accruing interest, currently at the rate of seven percent per year, compounded daily, after April 15, 2025.”
Commenting on why individuals working and living abroad have a two-month filing extension, Soled said it was “undoubtedly a relic of a bygone era when it was difficult for those living overseas to receive third-party information returns.”
He added that “in light of current technological developments, Congress would be wise to eliminate this exception.”
Richard D. Pomp, professor of law at the UConn Law School, previously told Newsweek, while discussing why individuals working and living abroad have a two-month filing extension: “The extension is a very old rule that predates the digital economy. Correspondence in those early days took place by mail and the time it took for mail to go back and forth across the ocean could lead to delays that taxpayers living in the country did not experience. In the digital economy, things are far more efficient and the rule is probably unduly generous.”
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