The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) experienced a computer hardware failure on Wednesday afternoon. Once the IRS starts accepting electronic tax returns again, they will be transmitted and the refund status should be available within 24 hours after your return was accepted.
Advertisement
“The IRS is still assessing the scope of the outage”, the agency said in a statement on Wednesday. Administrators over at the IRS say they “continue to expect that 9 out 0f 10 taxpayers will receive their refunds within 21 days”.
Georgians can apply to get a special PIN number at the IRS website.
The IRS says congressional funding cuts over the last five years have eroded its ability to maintain and upgrade technology, to conduct audits and enforcement and to assist taxpayers over the phone.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The IRS says it has stopped accepting electronically filed tax returns because of problems with some of its computer systems.
FCW, a sister site to GCN, reported that the IRS indicated systems could be back online February 4, but an IRS spokesman did not immediately respond to FCW’s request for comment. “The caller may threaten you with arrest or court action to trick you into making a payment”, said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. Generally, if the IRS needs to contact you, they’ll do it via regular old mail. While agency officials work to make sure all needed repairs are completed, individuals hoping to file during that period are encouraged to finalize their returns. And the HTTPS was crossed out with a red line in the URL of the “where’s my refund” section of IRS.gov a page that is usually secure where taxpayers enter their social security number.
It also stressed that taxpayers may continue to prepare and file their returns as normal. “If they’re due refunds, it’s going to be extremely slow”.
Advertisement
As a result, it will take additional time to process refunds. It was also mostly invisible to taxpayers, who were still able to file their returns with software companies such as TurboTax and TaxAct.
