IRS computers crash, could delay tax refunds

E-file providers, such as H&R Block and TurboTax, held the returns they received during the outage, and have now started sending those tax returns into the IRS, the agency noted.

The IRS was forced to suspend electronic tax filing February 3 because of a hardware failure that affected a number of systems. “I’m kind of wanting to know what’s going on,”‘ she said.

The IRS has announced that they suffered a hardware failure today, and that the IRS is working to make repairs and restore service but can not offer a firm date for when systems will be back to normal.

And in other news, many taxpayers have continued to embrace the provision of unrestricted federal and state filing to taxpayers being provided by the Indiana Department of Revenue.

While the agency reports that it’s still determining the extent of the outage, the IRS doesn’t expect anything drastic to come out of this.

IRS said that while IRS.gov is still available, the downtime for the other services will remain until tomorrow. The issues mean the IRS isn’t accepting electronically filed returns and the Where’s My Refund tracking tool is also down. The outage could affect refunds, but the IRS says it doesn’t anticipate “major disruptions”.

“We will submit returns to the IRS when it is ready to resume accepting e-filed returns”.

Despite the system setback, the IRS is optimistic that it can maintain the pace it has set for itself.

Keep in mind that the IRS will never ask you over the phone for your identifying information, and you’ll have a chance to respond to any audit if money is actually owed. “Some IRS systems still use the COBOL programming language”.

He also said some IRS systems still use the COBOL programming language, which Computer World once described as “a programming dinosaur that was last hot in the 1980s”.

Susan Bach, regional director of the Wisconsin Better Business Bureau, said her offices in Appleton receive complaints about IRS scams daily.

Scammers sometimes send bogus IRS emails to some victims to support their bogus calls.