Income taxes 2019

Today was -- not is -- the deadline for filing 2019 personal federal income taxes in the USA. April 15 is the usual deadline unless it falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or holiday. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) changed the deadline to July 15, 2020. The deadline to make contributions to IRAs and HSAs for 2019 was also extended to July 15. Link.

Among other things, the CARES Act eliminated required minimum distributions (RMDs) for taxpayers who were subject to them in 2020. The age at which RMDs begin to apply was 70.5. This was changed to age 72 in December, 2019.

THE HILL reports that participation in the IRS Free File program is up this year. "The IRS has received about 1.53 million tax returns through the program as of Feb 28. That's a 22.4 percent increase from the roughly 1.25 million Free File returns received last year as of March 1, 2019, according to interim data in a report released Monday by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA)."

Participation was higher this year probably in part because the program received lots of news coverage during the last several months, especially by ProPublica's sustained smear campaign of Intuit and its TurboTax. Maybe the coronavirus keeping more people at home with more time on their hands and less money will also boost the number. TIGTA said that about 34.5 million filers were eligible to use the Free File Program last year but didn't. It also said about 2.5 million did use the Free File Program. If the final count of users this year is 25% more, that will be about 3.1 million, still less than 10% of those eligible. I won't even guess how many of the other 90% use computers nil or little.