Announcer:
It’s time now on KROS for Financial Focus, brought to you by NelsonCorp Wealth Management. The opinions voiced in this show are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Any indices mentioned are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly.
Announcer:
Registered representative securities offered through Cambridge Investment Research. Inc., a broker-dealer member, FINRA SIPC, investment advisor representative Cambridge Investment Research Advisors, Inc., a registered investment advisor, Cambridge and NelsonCorp Wealth Management are not affiliated. Cambridge does not offer tax advice. Now here’s today’s Financial Focus Program.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Good morning, and welcome to this week’s Financial Focus brought to you each and every Wednesday morning right here on KROS. This is Nate Kreinbrink joined today by Andy Ferguson with NelsonCorp Tax Solutions, and I was joking with Andy on the way up here. Normally, we started getting into a little bit more heated a rivalry with our baseball differences in the NL Central, whether it’s Cardinals with you, a lot of Cubs fans in the office, Reds on my end. That’s going to be kicked back a while.
Andy Fergurson:
Yeah. Not much sports to talk about today.
Nate Kreinbrink:
We quickly shifted then to where we’re at and we’re not going to spend a lot of time with, obviously, everyone’s well aware of the unchartered territory that we’re in right now. Schedules, just be safe out there. Continue to follow those guidelines and then we’ll all get through this.
Nate Kreinbrink:
But as we were talking, Andy, the last couple of years with you heading into tax season has been pretty, pretty eventful. I know the tax codes have enough complexities of their own, but they always keep throwing curve balls to you. You go back to 2018, we had the Tax Cut & Jobs Act that got implemented. You had last year was the first year of filing under that new tax code. You had the SECURE Act and changes to some of the retirement accounts, how those things impacted and now the coronavirus, so giddy up, huh?
Andy Fergurson:
Yeah. Nothing like changing that tax code every year. That’s what accountants love, being able to do something different every single time you do it.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Yeah. The only certain thing is the uncertainty, and that’s not necessarily a good thing that people like.
Andy Fergurson:
Yeah, people think I live a boring life and it’s not as boring as you think with all these changes that happen.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Not necessarily in a good way.
Andy Fergurson:
That’s right. Well yeah, not necessarily in a good way. We’d much rather have it much more boring.
Nate Kreinbrink:
We look at, obviously, all the changes and some of the recent mandates that came out yesterday with a lot of the businesses and everything. The tax industry, obviously, isn’t immune to that.
Andy Fergurson:
Right.
Nate Kreinbrink:
There’s been some changes to the tax filing deadline and everything. Why don’t you start by going through some of those changes that people maybe have read about, but not necessarily understand.
Andy Fergurson:
Sure. What we learned yesterday from Director Mnuchen of the Treasury, he said that the tax deadline has not been extended.
Nate Kreinbrink:
That’s April 15th.
Andy Fergurson:
The tax deadline of April 15th stays the same. You are required to file your tax return by April 15th or any American at any time in any year can file an extension, which gives you six months automatically. So that stayed the same. What changed was usually that extension to the filing doesn’t give you an extension in time to pay your taxes.
Andy Fergurson:
But what they announced yesterday from the Treasury was that now we can extend that time to actually pay taxes for another 90 days, which puts the deadline to pay your taxes all the way out to July 15th.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Right. Then as far as paying taxes, how does that differ then for people that normally get a refund back then? What changes should they be looking at as well?
Andy Fergurson:
Yeah, so what’s interesting, what a lot of people don’t understand is that people who get a refund never have a tax deadline. They can always file after April 15th because the government doesn’t get concerned about giving you your money back. They’re much more concerned about getting the money that is owed to them.
Andy Fergurson:
And so the only deadline that a person who normally gets a refund is, is that they have to have that refund filed within three years of the year that that refund was earned, or the year that that refund was due to them.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Right.
Andy Fergurson:
So that means people who have 2017 taxes could technically still be filing to get their refunds with no penalty, no interest, no anything because penalties and interest are based off of what is owed, and since nothing is owed, the government doesn’t care. They’ll just send you a check. They just got to use your money for that time,
Nate Kreinbrink:
For that time period.
Andy Fergurson:
Yeah.
Nate Kreinbrink:
We’re looking at some of those changes. Obviously, understand a lot of that. When you say extension, people need to file an extension. Maybe talk to them a little bit about, okay, how do I go about doing that? Or what does that entail? Or how do they come see you to get that taken care of?
Andy Fergurson:
Yeah, and one of the things that I want to emphasize, and it was emphasized yesterday with the announcement, was we still should try and file as many tax returns as we can by April 15th. We need to keep things kind of in a rotation.
Andy Fergurson:
The way an extension is filed, it’s a very simple form that we fill out, and basically you take your information to your tax preparer and if we have your information by April 15th we’ll file an extension if the tax return is not ready to be filed.
Nate Kreinbrink:
We’re looking at that tax deadline of April 15th. We’re obviously less than a month away from that. Has there been anything from your standpoint as far as when you guys are filing that there’s been a delay with all everything else going on from filing standpoint, as far as when people should expect to get their returns back or anything like that from your end?
Andy Fergurson:
We haven’t seen any delays. The federal government’s returning the refund checks within about three weeks. Illinois is returning them within about three weeks. Iowa has always been slow, and they’re about eight weeks. But that’s what we expected going into the season.
Andy Fergurson:
As a matter of fact, we have notes in our software that tell us that we should expect eight weeks from Iowa and those notes were there on January 1st. So there’s been no delay that we’ve seen. Usually, the returns do slow down a little bit as far as the timeliness of them as the season grinds on, but that’s due to volume.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Right.
Andy Fergurson:
That may not happen this year because of the extension, there may be or the extension of time to pay. There may be a little bit or there may not be that bottleneck that happens.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Big rush at the end.
Andy Fergurson:
Right at the end because that spreads out the curve a little bit, allows people to file a little bit later. One thing that’s important to point out, and I want to go back just a second to the filing deadline.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Right.
Andy Fergurson:
If you owed owe taxes and you don’t file that extension, you may not be charged a penalty for failure to pay, but you may be charged a penalty for failure to file.
Nate Kreinbrink:
To file by that April 15th deadline.
Andy Fergurson:
If you don’t have the extension in there. And so it’s important that anybody that thinks they’re going to owe, make sure that they get their stuff to their tax preparer so that at least the extension can be filed.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Because, obviously, we want to avoid any penalties when it comes to that, especially if we owe.
Andy Fergurson:
Absolutely.
Nate Kreinbrink:
We don’t want to add more to that as far as going into that. A lot of that has to do with some of the changes to the filing thing. Obviously, as we said, local businesses, everyone is being impacted to that. And again, that’s not excluding what you’re doing right now from a tax business standpoint.
Nate Kreinbrink:
I know NelsonCorp Tax Solutions implemented a few guidelines that went into effect yesterday along with everything else. Maybe just hit on a little bit that and maybe clear any confusion up with people looking to file. Again, we’re less than a month away from that deadline for people that still need to get those taxes done.
Andy Fergurson:
Yeah. We want to make sure everybody knows we are open, we’re still accepting returns. We actually have capacity right now. We hired a new accountant this year. I think he’s been on the show a couple of times, Mike. And so we have some opportunities. We’re still taking new clients.
Andy Fergurson:
What we are trying to do is we’re trying to limit the amount of people that we have in the office at one time, so you may get a phone call from us that says, hey, we’d rather you drop your stuff off instead of have a face to face. The reason for that is to try and just eliminate the amount of people that are in our waiting room and all together all at one time.
Andy Fergurson:
We want to make sure people know that we still are having face to face meetings if that’s what they prefer or that’s what’s necessary for them. We don’t want to say we’re not going to do that, but we do want to try and do our part to spread people out a little bit and help that social distancing that they’ve been telling us to do.
Andy Fergurson:
So we’re doing everything we can to schedule times, make sure that we don’t have 10 people dropping off their taxes at the same time or picking up their taxes at the same time. We’re just trying to do our part to spread that out. So we appreciate everybody’s patience. We’re just like everybody else. We’re just trying to do the best that we can and get through an unprecedented situation.
Andy Fergurson:
Like you said, it’s been kind of crazy the last couple of days or last two weeks really. And we don’t know what to expect any better than anybody else. We’re just trying to do our part and try and protect people as much as we can. We know that a lot of the people that we see are in that demographic that we’re concerned about, the people that we need to try and protect. And so we want to do that.
Andy Fergurson:
We don’t want to see anybody get hurt or get sick. So we’re we’re going to be good community citizens. We’re going to toe the line as much as we can, and try and help in any way we can.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Right. And I think that’s extremely important to give people those options. And again, as a community, I think everyone has done a great job as far as following those guidelines and just understanding what they need to do, to do their part as far as keeping the community safe and in any way that they can.
Nate Kreinbrink:
And again, like you said, unchartered territory, whether it’s markets, whether it’s taxes, it’s just something we’ve never seen before. And again, we want to make sure that we’re making educated decisions with any of this type of stuff that we’re doing, whether it’s to do with your taxes, with your financial investments, anything along those lines. But again, do what you can, stay safe out there, follow those guidelines, wash your hands, all that.
Andy Fergurson:
Don’t touch your face.
Nate Kreinbrink:
All that stuff to kind of get through this together and we will do that. So Andy, I appreciate your time today and filling us in with some of those tax things, clarifying a lot of that stuff. I know that one time you came back from a conference and you showed me that big book that you got, and I was like, oh, is that the tax law? He’s like, no, that’s just the amendments to the tax law on top of that.
Nate Kreinbrink:
So very complex times, adding all these curve balls into it obviously doesn’t get any easier but contact them. Andy, Mike, Deb, Becky with NelsonCorp Tax Solutions and they’d be happy to help you out with anything that they can in that front.
Andy Fergurson:
Yep. Glad to do it. And I agree with you, Nate. I think the most important thing is that we make calculated decisions. We don’t want to do anything in a knee jerk fashion. We just want to think about, talk about, talk to an expert in whatever decision you’re making. Make sure that you’re doing what’s best as opposed to what you think everybody else is doing.
Nate Kreinbrink:
And I did want to mention real quick before we run out of time, we’re obviously, and we said it numerous times, this is unchartered territory. Whether it’s from investments, whether it’s from just the basics of living, kids being at home for school, businesses closing down, restaurants, bars, fitness, I mean just everything. This is something we’ve never seen before.
Nate Kreinbrink:
And you go on the news, and it’s hard sometimes to decipher what exactly is pertinent, what exactly is actual news and rather than everything being blown out of proportion a lot of the times with some of this stuff. But a lot of it is facts that we do need to follow.
Nate Kreinbrink:
I did want to mention and point out that our NelsonCorp CEO and President David Nelson will be live on KROS 1340 and KROSradio.com this Thursday, which is tomorrow, March 19th at 10:00 AM and then again tomorrow evening at 7:00 PM discussing this current market situation and other topics that people are concerned with.
Nate Kreinbrink:
So again, you have questions tune in. It’s only going to be about a half hour show or whatever. He’ll address a lot of these current topics, dealing with markets, dealing with investments, dealing with the economy, dealing how this is affecting each and every one of us.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Again, that’s David Nelson, President and CEO of NelsonCorp Wealth Management will be live on KROS 1340 and then as well as KROSradio.com tomorrow, March 19th at 10:00 AM and then again tomorrow evening at 7:00 PM, so tune in. Hopefully, you can take something away from that. I know he’s excited about getting on there and just again, we preach education, education, education. This is another way we’re doing it.
Nate Kreinbrink:
So Andy, appreciate you joining me today. We are out of time. Again, Nate Kreinbrink with NelsonCorp Wealth Management, Andy Ferguson with NelsonCorp Tax Solutions bringing you this week’s Financial Focus. Thanks again for tuning in and have a great rest of your week.
Announcer:
Financial Focus is a production of NelsonCorp Wealth Management in Clinton and Davenport. The opinions voiced in this show are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Any indices mentioned are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly.
Announcer:
Registered representative securities offered through Cambridge Investment Research, Inc., a broker-dealer member FINRA SIPC, investment advisor representative Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc., a registered investment advisor. Cambridge and NelsonCorp Wealth Management are not affiliated. Cambridge does not offer tax advice. For more information, visit our website at www.NelsonCorp.com.