With the holiday season quickly coming to a close many family’s wallets are still probably recovering from the Christmas shopping list. After the New Year comes though United States citizens can look forward (or dreadfully anticipate) the start of the new tax season and begin looking for tax preparation planning. According to the Idaho news source ClearWaterTribune.com, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced earlier this week that the 2016 tax season will start as scheduled on Tuesday, January 19.
Tax specialists will most likely begin their start to the tax season well before this time as it’s nearly impossible to keep up with all the constant changes to the Tax Code. Today, it is nearly four million words in length and can be very difficult for even the savviest of tax nerds to successfully navigate. Congress has made nearly 5,000 changes to the Tax Code since 2001. That?s more than a change per day on average.
“We look forward to opening the 2016 tax season on time,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said. “Our employees have been working hard throughout this year to make this happen. We also appreciate the help from the nation’s tax professionals and the software community, who are critical to helping taxpayers during the filing season.”
In an effort to avoid the hassle of doing them by hand and finding print and copy services to submit them many people are expected to utilize more modern methods. The IRS estimates that they will receive over 150 million individual returns this coming year and more than four out of five will be prepared using tax preparation software and e-filed.
Both paper and electronic tax returns will be accepted and while there will be no direct preference given to either it’s likely you’ll see your money faster if you file electronically. Still, many tax prep services Detroit and across the country are accepting returns in early January so that they can be submitted the first day filing begins.
“We encourage taxpayers to take full advantage of the expanding array of tools and information on IRS.gov to make their tax preparation easier,” Koskinen said.
