In the past, if you were owed a refund by the IRS or California, you would not receive a penalty for filing your tax return late. This may not be the case with California anymore. We have a client who is being charged a very large fine by the state for filing late even though he was owed a refund. We will be fighting this of course, but as a word of caution we would always recommend filing an incomplete return on time and filing an amendment later as opposed to filing a late return.
We file automatic extensions for all clients who aren't ready to complete their returns by April 15th (March 15th for corporations). These extensions are good until October 15th and September 15th respectively.
