The Internal Revenue Service was blighted with a major website outage as taxpayers rushed to settle up with Uncle Sam at the last minute.
Procrastinators can breathe a sigh of relief.
Taxpayers who were unable to file their last-minute returns Tuesday because of an IRS website crash will be given an extra day to file, federal officials said.
« This is the busiest tax day of the year, and the IRS apologizes for the inconvenience this system issue caused for taxpayers, » acting IRS Commissioner David Kautter said in a statement. « The IRS appreciates everyone’s patience during this period. »
The IRS said that the untimely Tax Day website crash was caused by « technical difficulties, » leaving 11th hour filers furious.
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Kautter said the IRS’ « Direct Pay » online module was back up Tuesday evening. Filers will now have until midnight Wednesday to get their returns in, he added.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin had promised earlier Tuesday that taxpayers left in the dark would be granted extensions.
« It was just a technical issue we’re working through. A high volume technical issue that impacted the system, » Mnuchin told reporters in New Hampshire, where he touted the GOP tax plan with Ivanka Trump.
The « Direct Pay » site at first offered conflicting messages on when service would be restored — warning in red bold letters that it would be down until Dec. 31,9999.
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Another line indicated it would be down until “Thursday September 22,2016, due to planned maintenance.”
An earlier line — later scrubbed — signaled taxpayers would still have to find a way to pony up.
“Note that your tax payment is due although IRS Direct Pay may not be available,” the website read.
As news of the website crash spread, Kautter told a congressional oversight panel people won’t be punished for the governmental glitch, but said people should still file if at all possible.
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“If we can’t solve it today we’ll figure out a solution,” he told the panel. “Taxpayers would not be penalized because of a technical problem the IRS is having.”
Trump’s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow offered a deadpan reaction when asked about the failure.
“The IRS is crashing? Sounds horrible. Really bad,” he said during a briefing with reporters in West Palm Beach, Florida. “I hope it gets fixed.”
It’s unclear how many people were impacted by the website crash but, by comparison, about five million tax returns were filed on the final day of last year’s tax season.
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The IRS snafu also caused problems for popular third-party tax preparers such as Turbo Tax and H&R Block. Both said that they would hold onto customer tax returns and file them as soon as the IRS system reopened.
The website crash prompted seething sarcasm online.
“IRS Direct Pay is down and not functioning on literally the only day of the year that it shouldn’t be down. Nice work, government!” tweeted one user.
Others accused the IRS of not being helpful with alternative means to pay.
“Hey @IRSnews, why haven’t you had anything to say about the IRS Direct Pay outage?” asked @clofwhoville. “Why haven’t you provided any helpful information to taxpayers to help them understand their alternate options?”
With News Wire Services
