Question

Are underpayment penalties forgiven in 2021?

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
March 7, 2021
1 reply
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A month ago I filled in my Turbotax return and based on under-withholding due to special income this year, my withholding was quite deficient. Turbotax said I owned a penalty in addition to the amount I owed for Taxes. Tonight, I re-calculated my taxes and I can find no entry in Turbotax for the penalty it formerly said I owed.

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D

DavidD66

No, underpayment penalties are not forgiven in 2021. Last year, the filing deadline and payment due date for 2019 tax returns was extended to July 15, 2020. No such change has been made (yet) for 2020 tax returns. If you are looking for where the underpayment calculations are, they should be on Form 2210. If you cannot locate the form, it probably is due to reopening the return and making changes after you filed.

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G

g1en1es1ieAuthor

Sorry the question was worded clumsily due to my annoyance (at myself combined with Turbotax).

I had prepared my taxes over a month ago in Turbotax when the first rush of Tax forms were delivered in the mail. Because of a windfall on Dec 24th, TT calculated a penalty due since I had not made quarterly payments and the windfall put me quite a ways over the 110% prior year's taxes in my 2020 withholding from my fulltime job.

When I logged in last night, TT had my taxes due calculated but there's no reference to a Form 2210 irregular payments. I thought that maybe the penalty would be rendered by Turbotax after payment for some reason (TT mentions that some additional fees may be paid after tax refund/payment is made and I thought this might be one of them). I had also noted a month ago that the sooner I paid my taxes, the less the penalty would be (TT asked what date I would pay by, I put in Feb 28th and it gave me one value, I put in March 15th and it gave me a higher value for the penalty so I had it in mind that I needed to pay sooner than later to minimize the penalty.

So, I paid my taxes via e-File. Once I did that I'm basically locked out of looking at my tax calculations again. I guess I'd gotten used to the Windows version of TT and thought it was the same.. you could go back in afterwards and make changes to what if other scenarios for a possible re-file/amended return.

I don't know if I made an incorrect entry before exiting a month ago which wiped the penalty calculation but there is no form 2210 in my current TT return. Is there some way to get back in and re-calculate to figure this out? The "Amended Return" button showed today after the IRS accepted the e-File but it says that Amended Returns are not available until March 25th. Am I stuck?

TIA.

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JeffreyR77

It depends.

You indicated that you received a significant income spike or windfall in December.

The US tax system is a pay-as-go system. That means you do not have a tax liability until income has been received.

Your observation he sooner you indicated you were paying the balance due the less the penalty was also indicates there was less penalty because the time between when the income was received and when the tax was being paid was shortened (as opposed to waiting until April 15th).

When you are able to access the TurboTax Amend return feature on the 25th, you can check the actual Form 2210 calculations based on your individual circumstances.

You may not have been subject to any late payment penalties at all and can amend to recover any excess tax you paid when you filed.