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IRS Gives Taxpayers One-Day Extension After Payment Site Crashes

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

martyb writes:

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: 1) by tftp on Thursday April 19 2018, @05:56AM (1 child)

    by tftp (806) on Thursday April 19 2018, @05:56AM (#668887) Homepage

    I grant that there are occasional exceptions such as a near monopoly or extreme information asymmetry, that might change that

    Don't you see some asymmetry between a hungry man, who wants to eat, and a fat cat, sitting on sacks of food?

    Except the reason they didn't do it already. If they could sell something for more than they sell it now, then why aren't they selling it for more now?

    They are. They are just covering all wealth strata. Some stores sell common food of debatable health value for little. Other stores (Whole Foods, for example) deal in more exquisite goods for a larger price. We cannot look at the market as if there is only one seller and only one buyer. Certain math is involved. For example, if the vendor rises his prices, he may lose revenue, as the customers leave him and buy something else, maybe completely different. A wise merchant calculates the sweet spot by varying prices for a short time and monitoring sales. A seller is in a far better position than a buyer in this aspect.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 19 2018, @09:55AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 19 2018, @09:55AM (#668963) Journal

    Don't you see some asymmetry between a hungry man, who wants to eat, and a fat cat, sitting on sacks of food?

    Nope. The fat cat needs to eat too. And if he doesn't sell his food for cheaper, better quality/experience, etc, he starves as well since the hungry man goes elsewhere.