The Internal Revenue Service is not the most technologically sophisticated government agency in the United States. As proof, review your online payment system, called Direct Pay, which is still out of service on the tax filing deadline for the entire country, as outlined in Engadget . The Direct Pay system went down early this morning as part of a widespread failure of the IRS electronic filing system, probably due to a technical problem possibly related to the large influx of people trying to file returns. The system was inactive for much of Tuesday, and the IRS said it would extend the tax filing deadline until April 18 as a result of the outage.
Having said that, the agency expects about 5 million people to file taxes on April 17, the deadline for individual tax returns will be submitted to the federal government this year. (On April 15, the standard tax day, it fell on a Sunday and April 16 was Emancipation Day, which is a holiday celebrated primarily in Washington, DC)
You can still send online using a credit or debit card, but that's a transaction fee. The good news: David J. Kautter, the IRS interim commissioner, said today in a supervisory hearing that the agency will not punish citizens whose returns are late due to technical failure. As part of the overall system failure, the owner of TurboTax, Intuit, is telling customers to register returns with TurboTax as they normally would, with the company planning to keep them together with payments when the entire system is back in service. online.
Later on Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced that the deadline for filing personal tax returns would be extended by one day due to outrage. Mnuchin made the announcement at an event in Derry, New Hampshire, where he spoke with a crowd about the Trump administration's tax review with Ivanka Trump, according to Bloomberg .
Update 4/17, 5:17 PM, Eastern Time: Added information about the tax filing extension announcement from Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin. The title has been updated to reflect this fact.