The excuses flowed as steadily as the rain at the H&R Block office at 1430 G St. NW yesterday. Everyone had a reason for waiting until April 14 to have their tax return prepared.
Some people said they put off filing until the day before tax day because they were certain that they owed the government money; others explained away their procrastination with a simple “been too busy.”
“We just moved here in February,” said Sarah Van Allen, seeming quite pleased with her excuse. Then her husband, Gerald Trimble, reminded her: “But that was in February of ’03.”
“Well, we had to wait to get a lot of paperwork back from New Jersey,” said Ms. Van Allen, who lives in the District’s Penn Quarter neighborhood. “It took a long time,” she said.
Carly Van Orman, a D.C. lawyer, had visited this H&R Block office a few weeks ago to get her taxes done, only she didn’t have all the documents she needed.
So she found herself again sitting in the little cubicle of Chanra S. Chandrashekar, one of the office’s tax specialists. This is the first year that Ms. Van Orman, who graduated from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg last year, has been responsible for preparing her taxes.
“Next year, you’ll see me in February,” she told Mr. Chandrashekar.
He smiled politely.
The Internal Revenue Service expects that 131 million tax returns will be filed this year. By Monday, 68 percent had been filed, the same as last year at this time.
The number of searches for “IRS extension” on Yahoo was up 123 percent and the number of searches for “tax extension” was up 120 percent in the past week.
The number of last-minute filers could knock “Britney Spears” and “Jessica Simpson” from atop the search perch, according to Yahoo.
Almost 52 million returns had been processed electronically by April 12, a 12 percent increase from the similar period last year.
People tend to procrastinate because they suspect that they will owe the government money, said IRS spokesman Sam Serio. The agency has concentrated on promoting e-filing to people who owe taxes.
“I’ve been trying to push the idea that, if you have a balance due, you want to file electronically because you’ll know within 48 hours if we received your payment,” said Mr. Serio, who has spent most of the past few days appearing on local television and radio programs to urge people to file their returns before midnight tonight.
About 12 million returns were filed from home computers, up 20 percent from the similar period last year and 150,000 short of the total filed in 2003. About 36.6 million returns were filed electronically by professional tax preparers, an 11.8 percent increase from last year.
“We’ve been pushing e-filing for the last six or seven years. I think it’s finally hitting home,” Mr. Serio said.
For those who insist on waiting until the last minute, the U.S. Postal Service will keep more than 20 post offices in the Washington area open until midnight tonight.
These include the National Capital and Friendship Heights offices in the District, the Laurel and Silver Spring offices in Maryland and the Alexandria and Manassas offices in Virginia.
H&R Block, the nation’s largest tax preparer with 19 million customers, and Jackson Hewitt Inc., its chief rival, also will keep late hours at some offices today. Some people walk in off the street on April 15 without an appointment, H&R Block officials said.
This was evident at the 1430 G St. NW office yesterday, where the small waiting room was standing room only by 3 p.m.
“Can I be added to the waiting list to have my taxes done?” asked one man as he came in.
“Just go ahead and take a seat,” said the receptionist in between phone calls.
“There’s no waiting list?”
“There’s no waiting list. Just take a seat. We’ll get to you as soon as we can.”
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