How to Estimate Tax for 1040 extension

dual89 · Post by **dual89** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 12:52 pm

I may need to take an extension this year, because I don't have everything ready for my accountant on time. I am afraid that if I ask him to take an extension for me, I will both waste his time and get billed twice, because he may do almost as much work to estimate my tax as to file my tax. So, I want to figure out what I would need to estimate the tax myself for an extension: Two possibilities are:

1. Based it on something like 1.2 * last year's tax

2. Run my main numbers through tax software to get a rough estimate.

Are either of these acceptable to the IRS. It seems kind of circular that we need to say how much tax we owe in order to extend. The reason we extend is because we don't know yet.

Thanks ahead of time for any suggestions.

nelsona · Post by **nelsona** » Mon Mar 31, 2014 1:10 am

2. is the correct method.