Computer Issues Shut Down Tax Return E-File System, IRS Says

A security camera hangs near a corner of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service building in Washingt

Thomson ReutersA security camera hangs near a corner of the Internal Revenue Service building in Washington

Despite the electronic outage, the IRS continued to predict that nine out of 10 taxpayers would have their tax refunds issued within 21 days.

With tax filing season gathering steam and people gearing up to enter their financial details within the IRS computers, having them go down at such a juncture was one of the worst timings for the agency. The outage is causing problems with the "Where's My Refund ^[1]" site, several online tools, payment processing, and the ability to e-file.

The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has restored its systems after a mystery outage on Thursday February 5 that lasted 24 hours. Throughout this period, officials indicated taxpayers were able to continue to send their tax returns to their e-file provider.

"We hope to have that back up again running at some point today", the IRS said of the system used to process tax returns for millions of Americans.

Even with the hardware failure, the agency expects that ninety percent of taxpayers will be receiving refunds in three weeks.

Scammers often alter caller ID numbers to make it look like the IRS or another agency is calling.

Normally when a return is transmitted to the IRS a preparer will know if its accepted within 15 minutes, but here's what's been happening during the outage.

"The IRS is now in the process of making repairs and working to restore normal operations as soon as possible", it said. She said this isn't the first problem to come up with filing taxes online.

Until the issue is fully resolved, features like "Where's my refund" are not available on IRS.gov. However, the main website ^[2] is still working.

The IRS is in the midst of tax season - a bad time for the agency to have computer troubles.

"Taxpayers across the nation face a deluge of these aggressive phone scams".

Scam artists often threaten police arrest, deportation, license revocation, court action and other frightening things, the IRS reports.

Taxes are due this year on April 18.