Because April 15, the dreaded tax day, fell on a Sunday this year, taxpayers who did file returns or extensions got an extra day before they had to face the music. That also meant one more harried day for the roughly 15,000 licensed CPAs, tax preparers and accountants doing business in Southern California who have been burning the midnight oil since the start of tax season in late January. Valley-based tax professionals have a litany of war stories to tell about how they prepare for and survive the tax season. Most say they can take it though. After all, for many it will produce the bulk of their annual revenues. All agree that, until there is a cure for procrastination and disorganization, the final weeks leading up to “The 15th” will always be crunch time. Jim McInerney, of McInerney’s tax services in Sherman Oaks, said that, as of April 1, roughly 70 million returns across the country had been filed. That leaves another 60 million more to come all in the final two weeks before the deadline. “There’s no question about it, we are used to procrastination,” said McInerney, whose father started the practice in 1971. He’s run it the last seven years. McInerney said he built a home office specifically to give him some downtime away from the bustle of the main office during the height of the busy season. “My day starts about 8 a.m. and ends around 10:30 p.m., with interviews all through the day,” said McInerney. “So it’s pretty harried. And it’s nice to be able to work where you can get away and just focus.” The work for tax professionals doesn’t really stop at midnight on the 15th or this year, the 16th because all those folks who file for extensions will be back in five months to complete their returns. According to Chris Conley, an IRS spokesman based in Laguna Beach, of the roughly 4.3 million returns filed in Los Angeles County this year, roughly 70,000 will be filed under an extension. For the first time this year it became possible to file for an extension via telephone. The problem, said Conley, is that many taxpayers forget the extension is a grace period for filing returns, not for making payments. Clearly the most common headache for tax professionals is missing data. “The biggest problem for us is people come in and you have an interview lined up with them but there is not enough information, so you can’t complete the returns,” said Ed Boots of Boots & Associates in Tarzana. “It’s very frustrating.” Boots has three full-time employees and one part-timer. During tax season he pulls two or three “reserves” in to help out. “You do whatever is necessary to get through it,” said Boots. Boots said he expected to complete between 600 and 700 returns this year, more than 75 percent of them for new clients. “This is when we make the bulk of our profit,” said Boots. “The rest of the year we do bookwork and it generally just pays the bills, so we count on this time of year.” Boots said revenues for the firm are “not as good as they should be” because he’s kept his fees on the lower end of the scale. The average fee his firm charges for a return is about $90. Michael Bailey is the owner of Instant Prep.com in Northridge. His company is in the final stages of completing its Web site, where users will be able pay to have their returns done electronically, or click on a “do-it-yourself” link. On-line or “E-filing,” said Bailey, offers a cleaner, quicker way to complete income tax returns. But he cautioned that do-it-yourself E-filers can run into trouble, so there will always be a need for professional assistance, on and off line. “The software, really, is only as good as the person who’s using it,” said Bailey. “And over-reliance on it leads to a lot of errors and mistakes.” But, according to Conley, the error rate on a paper return is about 20 percent, compared to .5 percent for electronic returns. In addition, he said errors on electronically filed returns can be identified much more quickly, which means the taxpayer finds out about it much sooner. In many cases, E-filers typically will learn of an error within 48 hours, if it’s something simple like a name and Social Security number not matching up. Conley said the number of E-filings is growing. As of last week, roughly 600,000 returns in Los Angeles County had been filed electronically, representing about a 13-percent increase over 2000, or roughly one in seven returns.