IRS postpones deadline for gift and GST taxes due to coronavirus

The Internal Revenue Service is postponing the date for filing gift tax and generation-skipping transfer tax returns and making payments until July 15 because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The Internal Revenue Service is postponing the date for filing gift tax and generation-skipping transfer tax returns and making payments until July 15, 2020, because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The IRS issued Notice 2020-20 on Friday, extending the relief it provided earlier this month on the tax-filing and payment dates for most other types of tax returns. The IRS also said the associated interest, additions to tax, and penalties for late filing or late payment will be suspended for the gift tax and generation-skipping transfer tax until July 15.

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Hylan-Charles-Growth Partnership

Charles Hylan, CPA, MBA, is the managing director at The Growth Partnership, where he advises clients within several areas of TGP’s service offerings, including marketing, strategic planning, partner relationships and leadership development. Additionally, he is a senior business developer at ABLE: CRM for CPAs and leads efforts to bring the Rosenburg survey, a benchmark report comparing over 100 metrics across nearly 400 firms to the accounting marketplace. He has experience consulting and working with accounting firms ranging from sole practitioners to national and Big Five firms.

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Louisa Harbage-Edell is the director of market intelligence and strategy for Arity. She has spent her entire career in the insurance industry and most of that surrounded by telematics, first as an actuarial analyst at Progressive Insurance, before transitioning to business consulting, where she spent over a decade helping to build initial demand for telematics programs across the insurance industry, including launching the precursor product to DriveAbility.

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Megan Klein is the Actuarial and Rating Services Director at Arity. Her team is responsible for the actuarial support of Arity’s telematics models, enabling insurance companies to execute on their goals around telematics. Leveraging over a decade of P&C insurance product and pricing experience, Megan ensures telematics risk models are actuarially sound, consumable by users, and supportable with regulators. Megan received her bachelor’s degree in Mathematics: Statistics and Actuarial Science from the University of Northern Iowa. She is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society.

The relief is automatic and applies to any amounts due related to these types of returns. There’s no requirement to file for an extension and the three-month period between the original due date of April 15 and the new deadline of July 15 will be disregarded in terms of any interest, penalties or extra taxes for those who fail to file a Form 709 United States Gift and Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax Return by April 15.

Groups of tax and accounting professionals such as the American Institute of CPAs, the National Society of Accountants and the National Conference of CPA Practitioners have been pressing the IRS to provide additional forms of tax relief beyond the initial relief granted for tax payments from coronavirus victims.

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The IRS headquarters building in Washington, D.C.
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