The nearly two-week shutdown of the federal government will have an impact on the start of the tax season. The IRS has announced that the 2014 filing season, which was originally scheduled to begin on January 21, could be delayed by one to two weeks. This would push the earliest filing date to January 28, or as late as February 4, 2014.

A final decision on the official start date - the day the IRS will begin to accept 2013 tax returns from both businesses and individual taxpayers - will be made in December.

The delay does not affect the filing deadline, which remains April 15, 2014.

The government shutdown, which brought an estimated 90 percent of IRS operations to a standstill, came at a critical preparation time for the IRS. An estimated 1.4 million documents were either in process or were received during the shutdown period. In addition, the IRS was in the process of programming and testing systems to provide additional refund fraud and identity theft detection and prevention.

If you have any questions about filing your corporate or individual tax returns, please contact us.