IRS extends tax-filing deadline for all filers to midnight Wednesday, April 18, due to glitch with agency’s website
Americans are getting an extra day to file their taxes after key elements of the IRS website crashed on deadline day.
The IRS said that individuals or businesses with a filing or payment due Tuesday now have until midnight Wednesday to complete the task.
Earlier Tuesday, Americans who had waited until the final day to file online got an unwelcome surprise: The agency’s website for making payments and gaining access to other key services was down due to a “high-volume technical issue.”
The website was back online late Tuesday.
No additional paperwork is needed to get the one-day extension, the IRS said.
The IRS website crashing also caused problems for popular third-party tax preparers such as Turbo Tax and H&R Block. Both said that they would hold on to customer tax returns and file after IRS system reopened.
The agency did not say how many people were affected by the outage. But last year, about 5 million tax returns were filed on the final day of the traditional tax season. Electronic filing is the most popular way to file in the US.
The IRS said that at this point, the problem appears to be a hardware issue. It provided no further details on the cause or severity of the problem.
Tax day fell on April 17 this year because April 15 was a Sunday and April 16 was Emancipation Day, a holiday in Washington, D.C.
Former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen warned last year of a possible system failure, due in part to underfunding of the agency. Among the areas that he said were underfunded were the agency’s aging information systems.
Frustrated taxpayers and baffled observers took to social media to complain. Political leaders weighed in publicly as well.
The IRS typically recommends that taxpayers use electronic filing to avoid common mistakes. Online filing is quicker than dropping something in the mail — when the site works, of course.
Again, the tax-filing deadline has been extended till today at midnight.