NJ tax filing, state budget deadlines extended by 3 months

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Gov. Phil Murphy approved a measure late Tuesday evening to extend the state’s budget from June 30 to Sept. 30 and the state tax filing deadline from April 15 to July 15—just hours before the state’s previous deadline for taxpayers.

The bill’s approval comes as the COVID-19 pandemic grounds commerce to a halt, drives up unemployment and decimates state and local tax revenue.

Senate Bill 2338 pushes back the April 15 deadline by three months for the state’s income tax and the corporate business tax.

Last month, the Internal Revenue Service pushed back the tax filing deadline to July 15 for personal income and business taxes to take some stress off the mass influx of Americans who’ve suddenly found themselves jobless.

Meanwhile, the extension of the state budget means that state lawmakers and the Murphy administration will have the added time to fully gauge how much tax revenue actually ends up in the New Jersey’s coffers.

Murphy will have until Aug. 25 to present a new spending plan to cover state expenses between Oct. 1 and June 30, 2021, which will make up the 2021 fiscal year.

S2338 requires the state Legislature to approve a three-month stopgap spending bill, which according to Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-3rd District, could likely come in the form of borrowing, or issuing, bonds.

The state treasurer will have to report to lawmakers by mid-May with an assessment of how much money the state has made since July 1, any state or federal spending through Sept. 30, and an assessment of how much the current recession impacted Murphy’s $40.9 billion spending proposal.

But talks about how to finance that stopgap measure could not pick up until the state knows how much money it’ll actually have in its coffers for the rest of the year.

“We don’t yet know the full dimensions of the financial consequences for residents, businesses and the state, but there is no doubt that we all face some hard times,” Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee Chair Paul Sarlo, D-36th District, said in a Tuesday evening statement.

Murphy has said that the state could need as much as $20 billion in federal bailout money to plug holes in its budget, and only slithers of that have gradually trickled through to New Jersey. The $3.3 billion spelled out for New Jersey under the CARES Act falls way short of the amount needed, and most of those funds already must go toward the state’s COVID-19 testing and treatment efforts.