Nashville, TN – Tax-exempt organizations with January and February filing due dates will have until March 30th, 2012 to file their annual returns, the Internal Revenue Service announced today.
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In Tennessee, approximately 1,400 organizations can take advantage of the extended filing deadline.
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The IRS is granting this extension of time to file because the part of the e-file system that processes electronically filed returns of tax-exempt organizations will be off-line during January and February.
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The agency stressed that the rest of the e-file system will continue to operate normally and urged all individuals and businesses to choose the accuracy, speed and convenience of electronic filing.
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In general, the extension applies to tax-exempt organizations whose normal filing deadline is either January 17th or February 15th, 2012. Ordinarily, these deadlines would apply to organizations with a fiscal year that ended on August 31st or September 30th, 2011, respectively.
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The extension also applies to organizations that already obtained an initial three-month filing extension and now have an extended filing deadline that falls on January 17th or February 15th, 2012. The majority of tax-exempt organizations will be unaffected by this extension because they operate on a calendar-year basis and have a May 15th filing deadline.
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The extension applies to affected organizations filing Forms 990, 990-EZ, 990-PF, or 1120-POL. Form 990-N filers will not be affected. No form needs to be filed to get the March 30th extension.
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In order to avoid receiving a late filing penalty notice, a reasonable cause statement should be attached to the tax return. If organizations receive late-filing penalty notices, they should contact the IRS so that these penalties can be abated. The IRS encouraged these organizations to consider either e-filing early—before the end of December—or waiting until March to file electronically.