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posted by chromas on Wednesday April 18 2018, @12:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the something-something-death-and-taxes dept.

C|net reports:

If you were waiting until the last minute to pay your taxes and were depending on IRS.gov to make a payment from your checking account, there's some bad news.

For most of Tuesday, the last day to file taxes, the Direct Pay section of the Internal Revenue Service's website wasn't working. Instead, people planning to pay electronically saw a message reading, "This service is currently unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience."

Now there's good news -- of sorts. The site is working once again. And Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told reporters Tuesday that Americans who couldn't pay their taxes because of the outage will receive an extension. The IRS later said that individuals and businesses with a filing or payment due date of April 17 will now have until midnight on Wednesday, April 18. Taxpayers need do nothing to qualify for the extra time.

[...] Direct Pay is a service that lets taxpayers pay their estimated taxes directly via a bank account, free of charge. Paying with a credit card through the IRS site costs around 2 percent of the payment amount, starting at $2.50.

[...] While the problem persisted, both vendors had continued to accept electronic returns. At the time, an H&R Block spokesperson said, "We are encouraging taxpayers to continue to use our retail services or our do-it-yourself products as they normally would."

It was a similar story at TurboTax. "For those that prepared and filed their taxes with TurboTax earlier today, TurboTax is now submitting those returns to the IRS and is currently processing newly filed returns as normal," an Intuit spokesperson said after the government restored functionality to the IRS site.

From The Washington Post:

A computer glitch at the IRS knocked offline the agency's ability to process many tax returns filed electronically, a stunning breakdown that left agency officials flummoxed and millions of Americans bewildered. Senior government officials were at a loss to explain what happened, even as close to 5 million Americans were expected to try to file their taxes before the midnight deadline.

IRS officials did not specify what went wrong, saying only that they would undertake a "hard reboot" of their systems. By late Tuesday, the IRS said that its systems were back online and that taxpayers could proceed to file returns through the end of Wednesday. Taxes had been due on Tuesday. (That was two days later than the usual due date, April 15, which fell on a Sunday. Monday was Emancipation Day, a holiday in the District.)

[...] An IRS spokeswoman said that "all indications point to this being hardware-related. We're aware of no other external issues."

[...] It wasn't immediately clear how many people were affected or could take advantage of the one-day delay in the filing deadline, but IRS officials said taxpayers wouldn't have to do anything special to take advantage of the postponement. Many filers who use online tax preparation software, such as TurboTax or H&R Block, or pay their taxes directly to the IRS online were affected. The vast majority of tax preparers, such as accountants, are required to file taxes electronically.


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  • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday April 18 2018, @02:31PM (4 children)

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Wednesday April 18 2018, @02:31PM (#668588) Homepage Journal

    Trust me, this is going to happen less and less. I inherited a mess. Like the $5 billion website for Obamacare, which never worked. Still doesn't work. But we're erasing A LOT of Obama stuff from our websites. Simplifying so they work much better & faster. It's what we do.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday April 18 2018, @03:20PM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday April 18 2018, @03:20PM (#668608) Journal

    Let's see, who was president on April 15, 2017? Trump, yes. And there was no problem with the IRS's Internet presence then. Or the year before, or the one before that. But this year, it breaks?

    Seems to me that the current administration, not the previous one, is showing their incompetence and carelessness. Didn't allocate enough resources to run one lousy website, eh? Appointed an idiot crony to run the IRS? Tax day was scheduled long, long in advance, and everyone knew it would be a day of high traffic. Thought you could cheap out on that, and it would just work anyway. Reminds me of Rummy claiming that the occupation of Iraq could be managed with only 100,000 troops and the total fail of dismissing the remains of the Iraqi army which could have helped keep order, because the Bush administration thought they could swing that alone. And where is Rummy now? Disgraced!

    Oh, and the Obamacare site? Yes, had problems. Was anything learned from that? Not enough, apparently.

    • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday April 18 2018, @06:26PM

      by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday April 18 2018, @06:26PM (#668671) Homepage Journal

      I don't necessarily love your President, but I somehow don't think running the infrastructure of the IRS computer systems is anywhere on his radar screen, or influenced by any of his policies. Most likely this falls under the general category of "shit happens".

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
  • (Score: 2) by AssCork on Wednesday April 18 2018, @06:20PM (1 child)

    by AssCork (6255) on Wednesday April 18 2018, @06:20PM (#668668) Journal

    @realDonaldTrump
    Forgive the off-topic comment, but quick question about the whole bump-stock thing; Since you have a history of striking down (at least) two regulations for every new one put in-place, how about chopping-out a few of those restrictions from the Hughes Amendment?
    There's a line in there about a date of effect, around May, 1986, if I recall correctly.

    You could sell it to the blue-shirts that you're opening-up registration :D

    --
    Just popped-out of a tight spot. Came out mostly clean, too.
    • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday April 19 2018, @09:33AM

      by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Thursday April 19 2018, @09:33AM (#668952) Homepage Journal

      My sons -- not Barron, my 2 oldest sons -- love to hunt. I'm not a believer in hunting. I'm a big believer in the 2nd Amendment. We must protect gun rights, that's so important. For self-defense, for so many reasons. But we (I) can't go back in time. 1986, great year. Before my first trip to Moscow. Before I met Marla. Believe me, I'd love to go back to '86. Unfortunately, I can't. But I repealed the ridiculous Obama ban on elephant trophies. Go to Zimbabwe -- beautiful country -- bag yourself an elephant or two, bring back the tusks. The heads or the tails. With my blessing. Enjoy!!