Procrastinating on Your Taxes? You Probably Live in One of These Cities
Tax Day is coming quickly, and this new data reveals which cities are home to the most last-minute tax filers.
The last day to file taxes—also known as Tax Day—marks the end of tax season, and that day is April 15, 2019, this year. Unless an extension has been filed, all tax-paying U.S. citizens need to have filed their taxes by sending in their tax returns by this day or risk losing their tax refund, or worse, get caught skipping out on paying taxes they owe. There may be new tax rules this year, but that’s not an excuse to put off (or completely skip) filing taxes.
Still, unsurprisingly, millions of U.S. citizens wait until the last minute to file their taxes, even putting them off until the week before Tax Day. (April 8 through 15 is the last week of tax season this year.) According to filing data for 2017 taxes from 2018 from H&R Block, a tax filing software company, certain cities are more likely to be home to people putting off filling out their tax returns.
According to H&R Block, the top 10 cities with last-minute filers in 2018 were:
Plano, Texas
San Francisco, California
Austin, Texas
Irvine, California
New York, New York
Fremont, California
Boston, Massachusetts
Seattle, Washington
Oakland, California
Scottsdale, Arizona
Going by this list, Tax Day–procrastination is a national endeavor. If you live in one of these cities, you may be among the masses of people that wait until the week before Tax Day to file—but that’s not an excuse. If you can, set aside time to do your tax return yourself or make an appointment with a professional to get your taxes taken care of sooner rather than later.
Doing so means you’ll get your refund sooner—and it means you’ll have plenty of time to find any overlooked tax deductions that could save you money. The last thing you want is to be right on the Tax Day deadline and realize that, if you could just find a few receipts, you’d save some major tax dollars.
