Many taxpayers who owe taxes believe tax extensions protect them, but they are only partially right. Do you know the rules and deadlines for filing corporate and personal tax extensions? For companies it is March 15 and for personal tax returns it is April 15.

Here’s the ugly truth about tax extensions, but first if you need to file one, do it before midnight on the deadline by using Form 7004 for a company that you can get here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f7004.pdf or Form 4868 for personal extensions that you can get here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f4868.pdf

Penalty for not filing tax returns on time

The IRS is much worse than any credit card company, charging a 5% PER MONTH penalty up to 25% of what you owe for late filing that compounds DAILY. That’s a whopping 60% per year, even if you did file an extension!

Interest charges for late filing of tax returns

As of midnight on tax deadline day, the interest on any taxes you owe, but do not pay, with your return accrues at the rate of 3% PER MONTH up to 25% of what you owe for late filing that compounds DAILY. That’s a whopping 36% per year!

The total? A unbearable 8% per month (96% per year) compounding daily. Another “Pay For Life” program.

If you can’t pay what you owe, ask for a payment plan by filing Form 9465 Installment Agreement Request that you can get here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f9465.pdf

Note: the caution on the form that states: Do not file this form if you are currently making payments on an installment agreement or can pay your balance due in full within 120 days. Instead, call 1-800-829-1040. And yes, unfortunately, interest and penalties continue until it is paid in full.

The remedy is paying quarterly estimated tax payments if you owe taxes each year. At least what you pay in these payments cannot accrue penalties and interest.

The best money management remedy would be to join the grass roots movement to get Congress to get the FairTax Act passed. To find out more about what you can do to get involved and make that happen, visit www.fairtax.org today.

If you are in debt, claim your free copy of the Debt Reduction Solutions Guide here: http://www.thedebtreductionsolution.com/

If you have anything to say about taxes, leave a comment.

Sandra Simmons, President of Money Management Solutions (www.moneymgmtsolutions.com) specializes in helping business owners and individuals manage their money and do tax planning to achieve their financial goals.

If you are not one of the more than 1,900,000 people who have viewed this video on YouTube, then you need to watch it.

If you missed it, on February 27th tens of thousands of Americans across the nation woke up to what is really happening in the money management arena in government, and participated in a Tea Party: a symbolic start of the second American Revolution.

If you have watched this video, but haven’t yet mailed teabags to our un-representing representatives, then you need to watch it again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeYscnFpEyA&feature=channel_page

The Congress and the President anticipated the unrest in America that their recent economic stimulus package actions would cause. Why disappoint them? Watch the video and mail your teabags. Your future economic survival may well depend on it.

Got a story about your actions in response to this video? Leave a comment.

This excerpted article, by Charley Reese, former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper, does give a dramatically different money management perspective than the one we hear from our government in Washington D.C.

“Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The President does.

You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices, 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash.

The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party.

She and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts — of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can’t think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red .

If the Army and Marines are in Iraq, it’s because they want them in Iraq.

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it’s because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation,” or “politics,” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!”

Original Source Article: Reese, Charley “Looking For Someone To Blame? Congress Is A Good Place To Start.” 7 March 1995, Orlando Sentinel (Page A8)

Less than a week has passed since the $700+ Billion bailout plan was passed to handle the financial crisis. The money is gone. It’s all been dished out. Yet the Wall Street stock market crash continues, the economic crisis continues full steam ahead, and the greedy want even more.

Just today, Nancy Pelosi asked for another $150 Billion for the bailout to handle the credit crisis. No doubt her new plan is filled with pork belly earmarks. The government and all the greedy and corrupt officals on Capital Hill are admitting that the $700 Billion is just a start. They say it’s going to take at least 3 times that. I, for one, am not willing for my pocket to be picked any longer by people who have been elected to serve me, who are treating me like their economic slave. All those who voted for the bailout plan need to resign from office today. More appropriately they should be convicted of TREASON – betrayal after trust-Democrats and Republicans alike.

Indictments for treason should also extend to the recipients of the money for their criminal activities. Just weeks after receiving their $85 Billion dollar rescue package, AIG senior management reportedly spent over $400,000 on a week-long vacation retreat for themselves at a ritzy resort in California at our, the taxpayers’, expense. Their spa bill alone for manicures, pedicures, facials and massages ran up a tab of over $23,000. That is CRIMINAL! And that is just the first of the stories like these. A lot of heads need to be put on pikes. They have stolen America’s financial freedom.

I still want Ron Paul for President. He has the sanest money management plan of all. I still want the FairTax Bill voted in and the IRS voted out. It’s going to take an all-out grass roots effort by the American citizens to get the FairTax Bill passed. I believe, as does Ron Paul and the 70 or more other members of the current Congress who support the FairTax Bill, that it can be done.

I just visited the FairTax website at http://www.fairtax.org and read this message on the current economic crisis and the out-ethics activities of our government officials from their Communications Director Ken Hoagland. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Hometown America Must Save The Nation

At the heart of the financial meltdown now bedeviling Americans is a simple and profoundly ignored fact that does not require an advanced degree in economics to understand: Our government spends more than it takes in—a lot more.

Sure, regulators could have done a better job but, in truth, politicians at every level have frustrated attempts to blow the whistle on bad loans, bad reporting and bad ethics. Why? Because politicians have been buying our votes with our money—and our future earnings—for a long time. And they don’t want any interference from those they are “helping.”

It’s not just the naked bribes represented by “earmarks” for hometown voters; it is new entitlement programs like the prescription drug benefit, new rules governing the behavior of favored banks and investment houses and a headlong rush to buy the votes of the poor by guaranteeing home ownership, irrespective of one’s financial ability to repay a loan. Lest we forget, let’s also add up all the special tax breaks for favored contributors that have bloated income tax code rules to 67,500 pages. It’s a bi-partisan betrayal of our future cloaked as concern for the common good.

Although our nation was founded on the principle that the citizen was sovereign, government spending increases and more and more taxes taken from our earnings, savings and investments have effectively transformed the American citizen into a serf working another’s land for the privilege of taking a fraction of the fruits of his or her own labor.

Just Trust Us

“Trust us,” we are told. “We have the best interests of the nation at heart.” Citizens are now left with no rational choice to protect savings, college plans, and investments but to accept the new aristocracies’ trillion dollar picking of our pockets to prop up institutions that must function. It is not the first time in recent years that we have accepted the grasping hand of the federal government in our wallets to avert a disaster not of our making.

In 1983 a “Blue Ribbon” panel of similar leaders including Alan Greenspan, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and others “saved” Social Security from another big collapse by dramatically raising taxes on earnings of up to $97,500 annually. The promise, then, was that Baby Boomers would actually “pre-fund” their own retirement with astoundingly increased taxes, decades ahead of time. It was also promised as relief to the coming generations so they would be free of crippling taxes. Sounded good.

Lo and behold, the trillions of dollars taken in since then—far exceeding promised payments to senior citizens—have since been spent on everything else. Turns out, that it was nothing more than a new tax levied on those with earnings below $97,500 a year so executive and legislative branch office holders could have more of our money to spend extravagantly on “us” so they could win new terms in office. The FICA payroll tax has become a major factor in keeping the poor that way, retarding new business growth and keeping middle-class earners from moving up. Worst, it also turns out that our children and grandchildren will, in fact, still be burdened by an ever-growing and mind-numbing national debt AND unbelievably high FICA taxes to support their parents.

In yet another example of playing fast and loose with politics and our money, 1986 saw Congress reject the tax policies of the Reagan administration and as consequence, the Savings and Loan industry collapsed. Turns out the definition of the tax value of real estate holdings had been changed overnight by the House Ways and Means Committee and banks no longer met liquidity rules. That politically inspired cat fight cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. And worse, we didn’t learn.

It is past time–way past time–for hometown America to save America from our well-intentioned but criminally incompetent, at best, and cynically corrupted, at worst, national leadership. Do we have a moment to lose? Do we really need any more examples of how the new aristocracy can—and will—destroy the pursuit of happiness?

The reform that can save the nation and restore our identity as citizens who have empowered and limited government (instead of the other way around) is called the FairTax.

Because the FairTax allows every American to take home everything that is earned without any federal withholding, millions of distressed homeowners could actually afford home mortgage payments. The elimination of FICA taxes eliminates the highly regressive Social Security and Medicate tax but the FairTax provides a far broader stream of revenue into these faltering programs. Because the FairTax eliminates all exemptions, gimmicks and loopholes, Congress would be removed from the ability to buy votes with tax giveaways and billionaires pay taxes when they spend money. Because the FairTax makes nearly all federal government taxes entirely transparent, the sovereign citizen can know the score and put the brakes on extravagant new spending.

Because the FairTax eliminates the price advantage now enjoyed by overseas producers, American jobs won’t be leaving our shores. In fact, because the FairTax makes the USA the most favorable tax environment in the world, we can expect trillions of dollars of investment rushing into the US economy. With the FairTax, our money is ours first and only secondly devoted to government. Savings growth, investments and business decisions are guided by opportunity and real progress instead of tax avoidance tactics.

We’ve lost more than $2 trillion of our retirement savings in a week’s time and our kid’s future at college is in serious jeopardy. This didn’t happen by accident but at the hands of the very same people who have given the FairTax a cold shoulder. Those candidates and incumbents of either party who would spend our future earnings to stay in office and who reject the FairTax for similarly self-interested reasons now need a strong reminder from voters about whose offices they occupy. Please pay attention to our voting guide and send that message. [See the voting guide at www.fairtax.org]

Finally, our campaign needs your help—as always. We never have enough to do the job right. Send us a contribution if you can, even in these hard times. It may turn out to be the best investment you ever made. If you can’t afford a donation, then help us by recruiting two new supporters. And keep your cards, letters, phone calls, faxes and e-mails going to incumbents and candidates.

The plain fact is, we either now save ourselves from our new aristocracy or suffer the consequences as modern day serfs in a nation never contemplated by our Founding Fathers.