Race to finish line on for tax-filers

Niki Neilon admits she's a procrastinator, but she has a good reason: She's swamped.

Neilon, a certified public accountant at Casey, Neilon & Associates in Carson City, hasn't filed her taxes yet. She's been busy preparing a wave of last-minute returns before the April 15 deadline Thursday.

"The clients come first, then me," she said from her Division Street office on Tuesday.

And because of a variety of new tax credits, especially for first-time home buyers, this tax season has been more hectic than previous years, with many people visiting a tax professional for the first time, Neilon said.

Jill Senso, an education coordinator with the National Association of Tax Professionals, said there has been more confusion this year nationwide because of the first-time home buyers tax credit and other tax credits.

"They've come up with a plethora of scenarios," Senso said. "Who qualifies, so preparers have a lot of questions on that."

Neilon adds that given a rise in short sales on homes and cancellations of credit card debt, many taxpayers may be unaware that the Internal Revenue Service views those as taxable income.

Taxpayers may also be unaware of some tax credits, including the Making Work Pay tax credit, that credits $400 to some workers. Other credits recently added to the tax code - and often overlooked by small businesses - include deducting 35 percent of health care costs for employees if certain criteria are met and deducting payroll taxes for new hires that had been unemployed for more than two months.

As of the end of March, the IRS reported the average refund in 2010 was $3,198, up from $2,983 - a 7.2 percent increase.

Kress Cave, a CPA in Carson City on Curry Street, said he's working so much that he's now seeing tax returns in his sleep.

"I've had a lot of three o'clock mornings," he said. "As a matter of fact, too many of them. Once they hit they came in awful fast."