The intense presidential election season that seems to never end got turned up a notch this week with the first debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. No matter how you feel about the candidates or their policies, there is no debating (see what I did there) that their verbal clash came with a greater feeling of importance than any other debate in recent memory.

It did not take long before the candidates got to discussing their tax plans – giving the issue an important slot amongst that general feeling of importance.

It is clear that no matter who wins the election, there will be some tax law changes. This may feel disconcerting, but those changes are not a rare event. There are tax law changes all the time, they just rarely generate the level of notice they currently enjoy.

I feel like lately I have been saying this often (and it promises to continue for the next few weeks), but this is not the spot for me to lay out on which side of the issues I fall. In fact, what I feel more than anything is that no matter how things shake out, we will find adapting to that situation much easier than fearmongers would have us believe. This is not intended to demean the differences between the Trump and Clinton plans, just to say that we will survive, and doing so won’t be as harrowing as that word may seem to imply.

But yes, depending upon who you are and what policies get passed in the next administration, it is possible that your tax picture could undergo a noticeable shift. Just rest assured that we will remain on top of the situation and, as always, are happy to help guide you through it.

This seems a good time to put out a reminder, too, in our never-ending quest to remain helpful. This one goes out to those of you who got an extension to file their tax return this year. Those extra six months that you gained back in April may have seemed like it pushed your deadline far into the future, but that time is now rapidly approaching.

At least you do get a couple of extra days this year, though. A regular extension gets you until October 15^th to file, a date that happens to fall on a Saturday this year. That means you get until the following Monday, October 17, to finish your part.

That still is less than three weeks away, though, so the time for procrastinating has passed.

This also seems like a good place to give a general note about filing extensions. I am certainly not against the act, and do it for multiple clients every year. It also seems that multiples times a year, though, this act comes with a little misunderstanding. Please understand that extending your time to file does not also extend your time to pay. If you haven’t paid taxes owed by the regular April deadline, you immediately are open to penalty and interest charges even after legally filing for an extension.

And the IRS is not one to entertain any debate about that fact.