A 2018 report recently circulated on social media claiming that the U.S. tax period is on April 18th. deadline for 2018 when the post was originally posted.
‘The deadline for taxation is 18 April. Do your taxes soon, ”says the report (here), which has been shared more than 16,000 times since it was posted on March 29, 2018. Shares in April 2021 can be seen here, here and here.
The IRS website explains here that the expiration date for federal income tax of 2021 for individuals for the tax year 2020 has been extended from April 15, 2021 to May 17, 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. People in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana will have until June 15 to file their tax returns due to the disaster declarations issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) due to the winter storms in February (here).
In 2018, when the post was originally shared, the deadline for filing tax returns was April 17, 2018, as outlined here.
The tax deadline was April 18 last year (the date in the social media entries) in 2017 (here in 2019 the deadline was April 15 (here) and in 2020 it was July 15, extended due to COVID-19 (here) .
The IRS website explains in the deadline announcements linked above, that the tax deadline normally falls on April 15, unless that date is a weekend or a public holiday, with some state variance, depending on the public holidays of the state.
VERDICT
Untrue. The tax date for most individuals in 2021 is May 17 and in 2018 it was April 17 and not April 18.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.