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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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 18 2018, @07:14PM (1 child)
there's nothing ok about property tax. it means you never own your property. you fail to bring in enough new money in your old age, but you paid off you house and land and grow your own food, etc? tough shit. some piece of shit pig comes to take it all from you. the whole idea is completely ridiculous. if you want to fund the brainwashing of other people's kids or some lazy, useless county workers or more nazi pigs, you can do that through other taxes that are more optional like sales or fuel taxes. that was the whole reason the politicians tied it to people's houses to take the choice away. hey leaches, if the people aren't paying that means it's not their will. get a fucking job/skill, you fucking thieves!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 19 2018, @10:00AM
Property tax is just as optional as those. And just as I can "never own my property", I can "never trade" and "never travel" (though obviously taxes of the sort you have described do none of those things). Look, you've already granted that we need taxes to pay for certain community/government services. It's time to recognize that the people who own property receive the lion's share of the benefit of those services which you acknowledge.