TurboTax Overloads at 11th Hour

by Jordan Yerman | April 18, 2007 at 08:38 am

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Yikes! Turbotax choked on the deluge of last-minute filings, long held as a fundamental taxpayer right. Intuit assures its users that their filings will not be marked tardy, but such a development will no doubt have a chilling effect on attitudes towards e-filing.

Intuit confirmed on Tuesday evening that a deluge of last-minute filing had overloaded the electronic filing system used in its popular TurboTax software.

"Intuit is working with the IRS and has notified them that throughput on our electronic filing system was not what we expected, resulting in a system slowdown," the company said in a note on its Web site. "We encourage customers to continue trying to e-file as we continue to work on the issue."

The note claimed that TurboTax customers should "rest assured that their returns will be accepted as timely filed."

Also, my own attempt in TurboTax to check at 11 p.m. PT on the status of an already-filed tax return was met with this message: "We are having temporary connection difficulties. Please try to connect again later."

Intuit recommends that its customers check back after 1 p.m. PT Wednesday.

I did my taxes on paper. There. I admit it. I was afraid of something like the above happening, and then having to prove to the IRS that I was indeed not delinquent with my filing; now the sorting-out of the details is totally out of the hands of the filers and just between the IRS and Intuit.