Local CPA Says No Real Surge As Business Tax Deadline Nears

Businesses have just under two weeks to get their taxes filed with the state.

CPA Jennifer Phipps of Cookeville’s Phipps CPA said organization of your tax documents can help your preparer get your return in before the June 15 deadline.

“The biggest thing, I think, is have your financial statements ready for your provider,” Phipps said. “If you have the big bucket of receipts, just hang on to those. Give me a summary and ensure me those receipts are there. Any kind of summarization you can do is super helpful and can save a lot of time.”

The state extended the time period businesses have to pay their taxes by two months due to COVID-19. Phipps said filing the taxes are necessary to continue operating your business.

“Anyone who has a business license is subject to this business tax,” Phipps said. “It’s a tax on gross receipts. That one has been historically due on April 15 with the State of Tennessee. It is now due June 15, and that’s to get your business license renewed. To get that license renewed, you have to pay your business tax.”

Despite the looming deadline, Phipps said her business hasn’t had a huge spike to this point. She said she believes some of the programs the government put in place to address the pandemic led to some businesses getting a head start on their taxes.

“It’s kind of interesting in that our March to mid-April was almost double busy because of the SBA and PPP governmental loan processing was coming through,” Phipps said. “That was causing almost an accelerated timeline for a lot of businesses and self-employed folks. They were needing to get tax work done in order to get some of this funding.”

With all the activity surrounding the COVID pandemic, Phipps said the level of procrastination she normally sees has been different.

“It almost seems like a 50-50 split,” Phipps said. “We had the folks who were kind of on an accelerated timeline to make sure they had all their ducks in a row for stimulus funding. For those where that wasn’t a big focus, we’ve got them in the mindset of we’ve got until July 15 on those filings. So, I probably seen about a half-and-half split.”

Phipps said she also wanted to remind individual filers that their deadline was extended to July 15.