May 15 due date change for storm disaster affected counties

[lisaFTC]

Lacerte sent an Alert on 1/17/2023 re: CA and IRS deadline extended to May 15 for certain counties related to the storm disaster.

Today, is 1/20/2023 and Lacerte has not sent another alert stating how the program will be treating the due date of May 15 on their instruction letters and estimated tax payments.

I called the  Lacerte rep today and she stated Lacerte will NOT be changing the due dates on the instruction letter or estimated tax payments nor will Lacerte be offering a checkbox for the option to change the due date. She stated the government agencies, IRS and FTB, will look at the zip code and determine if the taxpayer resides in, or the business is in, an affected county. If the taxpayer's zip code is in an affected county and the taxpayer files their return and makes their payments on May 15, then no penalties or interest will be assessed.

Hopefully, Lacerte will send an alert as soon as possible to inform everyone how their program will be handling this new due date for instruction letter purposes.

[Strongsilence-CPA]

@lmscpa 

Overrides to May 15 are not allowed. But the tech support rep told me that the software will be updated in the near future.

[SFSTaxPrep]

What's going to be updated?  And they just changed it to October 16.  I'm already having to explain to my clients why I'm unable to have their payments come out later than April 18, when they're not required to pay until October 16.  I'm going to end up with more work going to the IRS & CA websites to put in manual payments if they insist on taking advantage of the allowance, which is certainly their right.

I am disappointed that Lacerte is not going to make this possible, or is the IRS not accommodating them somehow?

[Strongsilence-CPA]

Lacerte needs* to know that preparers must spend MORE time due to its software.  This is an excerpt from a letter I send to clients:

But the May 15 payment date can't be done electronically (due to an Intuit software limitation) for the 2022 tax due and the 2023 Quarter 1 estimated tax payments.  There are three options:

1. Pay them electronically on April 15 (which I will set up);

OR

2.  Mail those 3 payments with a check by May 15 (which you will pay and mail);

OR

3. Make those payments on the tax agency websites (which you will set up and pay.)

Let me know what you choose.

*Actually, they don't "need" to know; they closed the voting and that says they don't care.

[Strongsilence-CPA]

She said an update to make an electronic payment on May 15.  I didn't get the sense that she understood (or maybe her supervisor told her to say that.)

I read over on caltax.com/Spidell that ProSystems has the same limitation on electronic payments. 

[SFSTaxPrep]

It's now October 16th, per the IRS update last Friday.

[Strongsilence-CPA]

Allowing an ES on October 16th would be wonderful. This morning I asked if LC would allow a May 15th electronic ES payment. They won't.

[SFSTaxPrep]

They could allow it if they wanted to.  I'd really like to know their reasoning.  Unless the IRS systems somehow would prevent it, which I find hard to believe, since you can Schedule a payment through the website for any date you wish, then there has to be a reason that Lacerte won't allow that option.

California has the most Taxpayers of any state in the country.  So it's not like they're making the extra effort for some small county in Kansas.

Seems like they don't give enough of a S&*T to explain.  All they will respond with is a simple, "NO, we're not going to, too bad.  Deal with it."

[ericinsb]

Hard to believe Intuit doesn't give a **bleep** about California preparers.  It is hard to deal with Standard Letters being WRONG on their face !!

Does Intuit (Lacerte, Pro Series, Pro Connect) really expect us to go into EVERY client to change their f'in Due Date ? 

Intuit is causing me great deal of time that I don't have and shouldn't have to do.

Fix your friggin software !!!!!

[JBrustkern]

I too called into Lacerte to ask these very same questions regarding the due dates on the letters, the calculations of underpayment of estimated tax penalties, etc. and got the same response. The agent did send me a link to the "Work Around" in Lacerte which is very onerous. He also mentioned that the states would be sending clients back refunds of any over calculated penalties assuming they are in the effected area, did Lacerte consider that as preparers we are then going to have to field all the questions from clients when they get a notice stating WE prepared their returns wrong and why did we over charge them for penalties? The only work around is to manually calculate those penalties and override the system, this doesn't seem right. Surely with CA being the most populous state they would do something to make it more efficient for preparers in this state. I suggest that the program's be updated to automatically make these changes based on ZIPCODE. I believe they did that for the Texas snowstorms a year or two ago. If they can do it for that why cant they do it here?