The IRS is telling the people who took an extension not to wait for 15 October, and Free File stays open to them at an income of $89,000 or less
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Every extension filed in April comes due on the same day, and the IRS would rather not meet all of you on it.
The agency put out a reminder on Wednesday that taxpayers who requested an extension should file their 2025 return as soon as they can rather than waiting for 15 October. The pitch is practical. Filing over the summer avoids the autumn queue and leaves time to sort out a problem or arrange a payment, which is a harder thing to do in the first fortnight of October than in the last fortnight of August.
The threshold is $89,000
Free File stays open through 15 October. Guided preparation from the IRS trusted partners is free for anyone whose 2025 adjusted gross income was $89,000 or less, and the federal return can be prepared and filed electronically at no cost. The release says some of those partners also prepare and file a state return free for taxpayers who qualify, without naming which.
Above the threshold there is still a free route, and it is a different product. Free File Fillable Forms is for people comfortable preparing their own return, with step-by-step instructions and built-in error checks in the guided version rather than in this one.
The sentence that is not new and still catches people
An extension gives more time to file. It does not give more time to pay.
The IRS repeats that in the release and adds the practical corollary: anyone who owes should pay as much as they can as soon as they can, to limit penalties and interest. No rate and no computation appears in the release, and none is supplied here.
This is a reminder rather than a rule change, and it is written as one. It runs because the two operative facts, an income threshold of $89,000 and a closing date of 15 October, are what a reader sitting inside the extension window actually needs, and because this publication had never covered the programme.
