How to File Your Tax Extension Before April 15, 2026 – Don't Get Penalized (STILL WORKS!)

Are you worried about not being able to finish your personal federal tax return on time? The deadline's coming up, so you'll need to file an extension if you don't think you'll be done in time. I'm going to show you 2 different ways to file that extension to buy yourself 6 more months of time to file that tax return. Not that I'm saying you should take that long, but just in case you need more time, this is how you get that done. You file an extension and you'll get yourself up until October 15th to get that return filed. If you're due a refund, you actually have up to 3 years to file your tax return. But this video here is specifically for the people that are expecting to owe money and need more time to get that return filed. The IRS will let you file an extension as long as you file it by April 15th. That's the deadline for filing extension, just like the deadline to file your tax return. You can either e-file the extension request or you can mail in the paper version. First, I'm going to show you the fastest way to file an extension. There's a lot of tax softwares out there that'll let you file an extension online. My favorite is Express1040.com. As of the time of uploading this video, I am not being compensated in any way to promote Express1040. I've just been a happy customer for over 15 years. You can use Express1040 to file your extension, but you can also file it to file your full tax return. So you can keep that in mind in case you need a software option. I like it better than TurboTax. They're user-friendly, accurate, and they don't charge a fee for filing your tax return either. If you're new to Express1040, you'll need to first create an account. Once you're logged in, scroll down and click on Let's Get Started to accept their terms and conditions. On the top, you'll see Account, and there'll be a dropdown when you click on it. Choose File an Extension. By filing an extension, you'll have until October 15th to file your tax return. Now, like I said before, I don't recommend you waiting until October 15th to file because filing an extension only gives you more time to file. It does not give you more time to pay your taxes. Your taxes are due April 15th, rain or shine. So just keep that in mind. You can file an extension to get more time to send in your actual return, whether you're e-filing or paper filing, but you have to still make your payment on time by April 15th. There is no extension for your payment. That's due, and that's if you owe taxes. Paying your taxes late is bad news. The IRS actually has several different penalties that they apply. There's a penalty for filing late, there's a penalty for paying late, there's interest that's built on, on top of that. There's just a lot of added costs involved with not paying your taxes by April April 15th. But by filing this extension, at least you'll be able to avoid the penalty for filing late. You won't get charged that penalty because you're filing an extension on time by April 15th. Now, if you live in a state where you have to file state income tax, when you file your extension for your federal return here in Express 1040, you'll also be able to file your extension for a state tax return as well. I'm in Texas. Texas doesn't charge income taxes, So I'll only be showing you how to file an extension for your federal tax return. Now, when you file this extension, if you decide you want to go ahead and send a payment at the same time, Express 1040 is going to prompt you for your banking information so that you can go ahead and make the payment at the same time you're requesting the extension. And that's just to make sure that you don't end up paying a late penalty. Paying more doesn't hurt, but paying less does, because if you pay more than what you owe, then the IRS will give you a refund for the difference once you've filed your tax return. But if you pay less, they're going to hit you with a penalty and interest. Express 1040 is pretty intuitive, so they are going to ask you several questions that seem redundant. Like here, they have a yes or no of whether or not you want to file an extension. The reason why they're asking you this is because they have additional helpful information if you choose one of the other options. So as we go along, there might be some questions in here that they ask that seem like, why are they asking this question? Well, they're asking it because they want to make sure you have the best and most accurate information in in order to make the decisions that you need to make regarding your own tax return. So here we're just going to leave it on yes and click save and continue. Okay, now they're giving you some additional information. They're letting you know that once your request has been accepted for an extension, that you'll have until October 15th. They're letting you know things you need to know. We're going to ask— we'll ask you to estimate a few amounts. We'll talk about that in just a second. If you owe any taxes, you still need to pay by April We already talked about that. And then it says, we'll help you check if you need to file a state extension. And those are just basically, it's just going to ask you whether or not you worked in any other states and check and make sure whether or not those states require an income tax return for the state at the state level, and then help you file an extension for those states as well. In this case, we are only filing for an extension for a federal return, not for any state returns. So go ahead and click on Start Extension. Now it's going to ask you a few questions to try to make sure they're giving you the right guidance. It's asking, why are you filing the extension? Let's get a little bit more information about your extension. Why are you filing? I'm missing information needed to file my return. Second one is I need more time to file my return. Third one is I can't pay my taxes due. Fourth one is I want an extension of time to pay my taxes due. Okay, I'm going to choose the first 3 so that you can see what type of additional information it provides. And click Save and Continue. Now it's going to explain each of those boxes that we checked off as far as your tax payment options. Unfortunately, filing an extension does not extend the date your taxes are due, and what they mean by that is your actual payment. It doesn't extend the time that your payment is due for your tax return. There's 3 charges you can get hit with for not paying your taxes on time, the actual payment part of it. One is if you didn't pay enough taxes in the previous year because you're supposed to pay the previous year ahead of time for the tax return before the year ends. Then 2 is when you don't pay by the time your taxes are due, you don't make your payment. And then the 3rd one is the interest that you'll owe for not paying on time. I'm just doing a terrible job of explaining this. Goodness gracious, get it together. You won't get hit for not filing on time because you're filing an extension. And then if you pay now and you guesstimate over what you end up owing, then you won't get hit with penalties for not paying enough. And you won't get hit with interest. It says, here's what you can do. You can continue with your extension and pay the taxes you owe. And like I said, you can guesstimate how much you owe, go ahead and make that payment here now when you're filing this extension, or you can file your extension and not make a payment. And the third one, it says you can file your regular tax return with an installment payment plan request or apply for one online. Now, I'm not going to get into the details of when you should or should not set up an installment plan. If you have questions about things like like that, you can always join my membership at lomorisper.com. It's the BAM Boss membership. I have a private community set up where you're able to ask questions in there, and I can help you through the community. It says, note, if you can't pay the taxes you owe by April 15th, filing an extension will help you avoid the late filing penalty, but you may still owe a late payment penalty and interest on the unpaid amount. So that's just something to keep in mind. This extension is just to give you more time to file, not more time to pay. Go ahead and click Save and Continue. Now they're going to ask you about your basic information, your name, address, and they ask you if you're being paid to prepare this tax extension. And if you're filing for yourself, you just leave it on no and then click Save and Continue. It's going to ask you what your filing status is. So you're going to mark which one applies to you here and then click Save and Continue. And then here they're going to ask you again, do you expect a refund or do you expect to owe money? Now the reason why they're asking you again is because they're kind of double, triple checking with you to make sure that you understand clearly what your options are and a little bit more about your situation. So if you're expecting a refund and you click that, they're going to provide you more information about your situation where you don't have to file an extension. But for those of you who are filing extension, likely you expect to owe money, so click that option and click Save and Continue. Next, they need to know what you expect to owe. That means as of today, what do you think you'll end up having to pay? They need to know that amount. You're going to have to estimate the amount that you think that you owe. Type that into the box and click Save and Continue. Next, they're going to ask you how much have you already paid in 2024. And so there are a couple of amounts that you'll put in here. If you've already made estimated tax payments, that amount is going to go in here. In addition to that, if you worked a job and you have a W-2, you'll add up the amounts in Box 2 of your W-2 and add that to the total amount that you paid in 2024 already. Then click Save and Continue. Almost done. Now it's going to ask you, how much do you want to pay with this extension? They're giving you the opportunity to put in an amount. If you don't want to make a payment with this extension, leave it at zero and click Save and Continue. If you decide you want to make a payment at the same time you're filing this extension, go ahead and put that amount right there, and then they're going to ask you for your banking information. Once you're done, click Save and Save and Continue. In the Federal Extension Summary, they're just going to show you the information that you entered. If everything looks okay, click Continue. Next, they're going to ask you about your state extension, if whether or not you need one. If you need one, go ahead and click that you need to add a state extension, whichever state applies to you. If you do not and you live in Texas like myself, you do not need to add a state extension since Texas doesn't charge income tax, so you'll just click Continue. Now it's just confirming to let you know that you chose not to make a payment with this extension. Click Save and Continue. Now it's checked the information that provided. It doesn't see any issues with the information that was entered, so just click Continue. Now they're going to give you the opportunity to review your extension. This is a little bit different. This is going to show you how they filled in the official IRS form with your information that you provided. So click View Here so that you can take a look at the form and make sure everything looks good. Here's what it'll look like. It'll show your name, your address, your Social. If you have a spouse that you were filing an extension for with yourself, would you file like married joint, the spouse's Social will be there as well. And then on the right side in Part 2, it's going to show the estimated total tax liability, the payments that you made, and the balance that you said that you're expecting to be due, and that you're not planning to make a payment if that's the option that you chose. So this is what it'll look like if it's filled out correctly. It doesn't require a signature or anything like that, and it's ready to go. If everything looks good on your end, go ahead and click Save and Continue. Okay, now it's asking whether or not you want to e-file your extension or if you want mail your extension. So at this point, if you decided you wanted to print and mail it for whatever reason— everybody has their own reasons for why they do certain things— you have that option right here. And the form that they just filled out for you, they would allow you to, to print it out so that you can go ahead and mail it off. Now, if you want to get this done quickly and make sure that the IRS receives it on time, you would click the e-file option, which is the way that I prefer to do it, and then click Save and Continue. Now they're just asking for your consent to electronically sign your extension for you. Basically, it's just asking you to acknowledge that you're giving them permission to send this extension request directly to the IRS on your behalf. And they're also letting you know that you're going to be responsible for monitoring that it gets accepted, but they're also going to help you monitor that as well. Go ahead and click Continue at this point and then choose the option I'm ready to submit my extension. They're going to help you monitor whether the extension gets accepted or rejected. So go ahead and mark the Text me at and the phone number you already filled in. It's going to give you they'll send you a text. So now if you don't want to receive a text notification that your extension request was accepted, uncheck that box so that they don't send you a text, but they will still email you to let you know that the IRS has accepted your extension request. Once you've chosen your options here, go ahead and click Send Extension. This is the actual official submission of your extension request. Okay, you're done for now. All you got to do is monitor for the email or the text message for the acceptance of the extension request. They give you a little bit of additional information here, uh, regarding when to check for it, and they give you the opportunity to download a copy for your own records. So you know exactly what was submitted to the IRS. Express 1040 also gives you the option to get a reminder to make sure that you file your taxes on time, to make sure that you don't miss your October 15th deadline. So you can click that option there if you'd like a reminder from them. Otherwise, you don't have to, and you're all done. The acceptance of your extension request is pretty automatic. The IRS really doesn't look at your situation to decide whether or not they're going to grant you an extension request. They just pretty much automatically accept it. That's why the form is called the Application for Automatic Extension of Time to File. Application for automatic extension. That's the key word. Automatic. See? Now, if you prefer to do things the old-fashioned way and want to mail a paper return in and you actually want to fill it out yourself as well versus what we just did with Express 1040 where they prefilled it for you, We're going to go over how to do that now. If you need a copy of the form, I'll put a link in the description so that you can click on it and then you can just print it out and fill it out and follow the instructions that I've got here. And in this video, it's going to ask for the same thing that you just saw on the screen. Remember, I showed you a pre-filled in copy of it. Here's a copy of the full form. And when you finish filling out, you just need to attach the bottom half of this form so that you can mail in just that piece. Here's the information. Just as a reminder of what you'll need to fill into each part in order to complete this extension request. First and last name, street address, city, state, zip, social, spouse's social if you have a spouse that you need to add to this. And then on Part 2, you'll put in your estimated tax due, your total tax payments on number 5. That's your W-2 Box 2 amounts. Add those all together. And if you made estimated tax payments, add that in as well. And all of that totaled together goes on line 5. Then number 6, it wants to know what's the balance due. So just subtract those two amounts, the estimated tax liability minus the total payments. And then on number 7, you're going to write down whether or not you're planning to make a payment, like send a payment with this extension request. If you decide not to send in a payment, just put zero here on line 7. If you're planning to make a payment with this extension, put that amount here, and then you're all done. If you have the form in front of you, you'll see the instructions on what to fill out as far as your payment, whether it's check or money order that you're sending in, and what information you need to write on the, like, the memo line to make sure that your account gets credited correctly. You'll also see exactly where you need to mail your extension request. There's a list of states and then the addresses where you'd be sending your extension request. Now, if you're planning to make a payment, the address is going to be a specific address. If you decide to send the extension request with no payment, then there's a different address that you need to send your extension request to. So first you're going to go through the first column and look for your state, and, uh, we're in Texas, so that's the first batch of states. If you're in Texas and you're not making a payment with your extension request, the address would be Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service Center, Austin, Texas 73301-004. 5. So that's where you would mail it if you were not sending a payment and you were in Texas or one of those other states that are in that same line. If you are sending a payment though, they want you to send it to North Carolina. And remember, like I said, it doesn't require a signature. You want to make sure you keep a copy for your records so that you have proof that you've mailed it on time. You can even mail it certified or certified with electronic return request. It's going to cost you a few more dollars, probably like $8 or $9 approximately, to mail it that way, but there's going to be a tracking number attached to that extension request when you mail it, and that way you have proof that you mailed it on time, because that's the date that the IRS will go based on. They'll go based on the actual, uh, stamped date that's on the envelope when you mail it. So if you say, if you fill it out one day and you take 3 days to take it to the post office, the date that the post office marks on it is your official filing date, not the date that the IRS receives it. At their, at their own mailbox. So that's just something to keep in mind as far as dates that the IRS goes by. So now you know two different ways to file an extension for your personal federal tax return in case you need more time to file your taxes. And you know, two different ways to get it done. I hope you found this video helpful. I wanted to make sure I got this done real quick. I know it's a very time-sensitive situation. I just want to make sure you guys had a little bit of help to get an extension in case that helps your situation out a little bit. If you have any questions about this video, just drop it down below in the comments. If you have questions about other business topics, you can always join my BAM Boss membership where you can get access to all my courses, my private community where you can ask questions and get your questions answered, along with having a monthly group video call with me and other small business owners like yourself. Thanks so much for watching. I appreciate your support. Bye for now.