Deemed to amend your federal tax return? I'm JT, and this is All About FERS. First, et's talk about some common reasons why you might need to amend your tax return. The first and most common one I see is K-1s. If you're invested in some kind of partnership, you might receive a K-1. K-1s are notorious for being late in the tax season, so chances are you may have already filed your taxes, and then that K1 shows up
later. The K1 shows profits and losses for your share of that partnership, so if that comes in late, after you've already filed your tax return, you might need to do an amendment. Some other common reasons that you might need to do an amendment are mistakes. Mistakes happen if you're using the DIY software, maybe you made a mistake. Maybe you entered a number wrong. Maybe your tax preparer made a mistake. Another common one is
late 1099s. Same reason, maybe one of your investments was a little bit late in sending out their 1099s, or maybe you just missed it in the mail. The process for amending a federal tax return is pretty straightforward, and chances are, if you need to amend your federal tax return, you probably need to amend your state tax return as well. States have different requirements, different forms that are
required in different processes. So today we're just going to focus on the federal tax returns and the amendment process. So the form we're going to be looking for is form 1040X. The X stands for an amendment. The form is surprisingly simple. The first section is all of your identifying information, name, address, social security, number, things like that. Then there's a section that has three different columns. The first column is for the original information that was on your tax
return. The next one is for the net change, and the third column is for the corrected amount. A little bit further down the page, there's a section of explanation of changes. This is where you would explain that the K1 was sent late, or that you made a mistake, or the tax preparer made a mistake there. Generally, less is more here, you don't need to be writing an entire essay or a paragraph, just something short, sweet and simple. So how do we go about filing the 1040X?Well, again,
it's going to depend on how you filed your tax return. Did you use one of the online software programs and did it yourself? Did you use a tax preparer? I'd recommend going back to whatever that method was. If you use the online software, then go back to that and make it really easy to make an amendment. If you use the tax preparer, then let's go back to that same tax preparer, and they can walk you through and help you do that amendment
as well. So now we're looking at really two scenarios, the scenario and where you might owe taxes, and the scenario where you might get an additional refund, and the scenario that you owe taxes, you're probably going to be charged interest and penalties on top of that. So filing it sooner than later is going to be better, because those interests and penalties are going to continue to accrue over time. If you're owed an additional refund, there are some deadlines that you should
be aware of. The deadline for a credit or refund is three years from your original filing date or two years from when you paid the taxes, whichever is longer. So for example, if we're talking about the 2023 tax year, and you think you think you might need to make an amendment. You probably filed those taxes before April 15 of 2024. The deadline for filing an amendment would be three years from 2024, so it would be April 15 of 2027.
Again, if you owe taxes, if there's no filing deadline, the IRS is always happy to take extra payments, but I'd recommend getting it done sooner than later, again, because those penalties and interests are going to continue to accrue. So again, should you file an amended return? Well, again, I think there's three scenarios here. The first one is, if you owe extra tax, if you owe extra tax, yes, definitely file the
return and get that done sooner than later. The second scenario is, if you do a refund, I would say, how much refund are you owed? If it's a small amount, say $30 or something small, then we need to look at the cost and effort to amend the return versus how much refund we're going to get. It'll probably cost you more than $30 to use the online software or use your tax preparer. And so balancing that a little bit, I think, is going to be smart to think of if it's just $30 maybe just let it
go and don't worry about it. If this is a big error and it's going to result in a large refund, it's definitely worth paying money to get the amended return done. The third scenario here is if your tax preparer made the error. Now I'm not talking about that you didn't provide them the right information, or maybe you forgot to give them a form, but if they made the error on their own, then they should probably cover the cost for amending that return and giving you that
additional refund. So I hope this was helpful for you. If you'd like to have another set of eyes on your tax return, or if you'd like to talk about during the eventfull situation, click the link below to go to our website, and schedule a consultation with one of our federal benefits specialist. Until next time, happy planning.