April 18th, 2007
Intuit’s Computers ‘Taxed’ by Late Filers
By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
This’ll teach people to not wait until the last minute … maybe. So many people were e-filiing yesterday, that Intuit’s e-filing system became overloaded … and transactions that normally take minutes were, by Tuesday evening, taking hours.
A record number of returns from both individual taxpayers and accountants started causing delays in Intuit Inc.’s e-filing system early Tuesday, and the problem got worse as the midnight deadline for getting forms to the Internal Revenue Service approached, said Harry Pforzheimer, a company spokesman. Source: MSNBC
We Say: I filed weeks ago, and received my refunds late last week from both State and Federal agencies. However, last night I was trying to register my copy of Quicken, and it kept timing out … it didn’t occur to me what day it was. A friend of mine was trying to file at 10PM, and the program told him the submission was “pending”. When he checked back, it said it had failed … and it was already past midnight.
According to the story, Intuit has informed the IRS of the issue and the IRS will have a statement later today regarding this. Cross your fingers, you late filers!
Update: The IRS has stated it will NOT penalize taxpayers hit by this glitch.
Update 2: Turbotax users have until Thursday at midnight!
» Another Tax Refund for You: Intuit to Refund Millions After e-filing Fiasco » Blog Archive Alice Hill’s Real Tech News - Independent Tech says:
[…] Tuesday the issue was overloaded servers. People trying to submit their returns via e-filing were met with increasing frustration as the day went on. Although the IRS has already said those affected would have until Thursday at midnight, Intuit has gone them one better by offering refunds to those attempting to e-file between 3PM Tuesday and 4AM Wednesday morning. Steve Bennett, the company’s CEO, also apologized for the breakdown, which prevented about 200,000 users from e-filing in the hours leading up to the midnight Tuesday federal income tax deadline. “We deeply regret the frustration and anxiety this caused our customers,” said Bennett. “This is not the experience customers have come to expect from Intuit. It’s not acceptable to us, and we will do right by our customers who were impacted by this delay.” […]
April 23rd, 2007 at 6:55 am