 And so there was that. So unless you have a required tax year, you adopt a tax year by filing your first income tax return using that tax year. So you want to make sure that you get this right from the start. Again, a lot of small businesses that are sole proprietors will be a calendar year, but if you're going to make a change, you want to research it and try to get off the first step on the right track, because it might be a little bit difficult to change it after you've already started adopting one particular calendar year. A required tax year is a tax year required under the Internal Revenue Code or the Income Tax Regulations. Calendar year, calendar tax year. A calendar tax year is 12 consecutive months beginning January 1st and ending December 31st. Straightforward, right? Just like it is on a calendar. So you must adopt the calendar tax year if any of the following apply. So what are my restrictions? Do I have to have a calendar tax year? Well, possibly it depends on the situation. If these apply, you do not keep books. So you have no annual accounting period. So your present tax year does not qualify as a fiscal year. So your use of the calendar tax year is required under the Internal Revenue Code or the Income Tax Regulations. If you filed your first income tax return using the calendar tax year and you later begin business as a sole proprietor, you must continue to use the calendar tax year unless you get IRS approval to change it or are otherwise allowed to change it without IRS approval for more information see change in tax year. So again, you want to get off to the first start. The way you want to go forward, you want to plan that out because it's more difficult to change it. Not impossible, but you have to have rationale to change it and you've got to go through a process to change it because the IRS wants consistency. So people aren't cheating by adjusting cutoff dates by changing years and methods. So if you adopt the calendar year, you must maintain your books and records and report your income and expenses for the period from January 1st through December 31st of the year. Fiscal tax year. What is it? A fiscal tax year is 12 consecutive months ending on the last day of any month except December. So clearly we still have to have 12 months. You can't say, well, my fiscal year is only three months. No, that's a quarter. It has to be 12 months, but it has a date an end period that's other than December. So a 52 or 53 week tax year is a fiscal tax year that varies from 52 or to 53 weeks, but does not have to end on the last day of a month. So now we're drilling down to the weeks. We can define a year by basically 12 months. 12 months are not exactly even because they have different days within them. We could try to break it down into smaller increments of weeks. When you think about weeks in a year, there's either 52 to 53 weeks in the year generally. So if you adopt a fiscal tax year, you must maintain your books and records and report your income and expenses using the same tax year. For more information on a fiscal year, including a 52 or 53 week tax year, you can see publication 538. If you want to dive into that in more detail on the IRS website, change in tax year. Generally, you must file form 1128 application to adopt change or retain a tax year to request IRS approval to change your tax year. So you could possibly change it, but it's difficult. That's why you want to get off right on the right foot when you start. Otherwise, you could walk forward. You could still move forward, but you're going to fall on your face as you're moving forward, which isn't the best mode of transportation. So see the instructions for form 1128 for exceptions. So if you qualify for an automatic approval request, a user fee is not required. If you do not qualify for automatic approval, a ruling must be requested. See the instructions for form 1128 for information about user fees if you are requesting a ruling.