Tax preparers report 1-hour delays
No returns were late because of filing software slowdown
Published Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Despite nationwide reports Tuesday of problems using TurboTax software to electronically file tax returns, Fergus Falls preparers report nothing more than a one-hour delay in logging into their online systems Tuesday morning, the deadline for filing tax returns.
“At first, in the morning at about 9 a.m., I was having a hard time getting connected to the server,” administrator Shannon Hohrman of Richard Pickett LTD said. “I wasn’t able to do any E-filing. But it only lasted about an hour. It did not cause any delays, and everything got filed on time.”
“It was a little slow, yesterday morning,” Randy Highland of Carlson Highland and Co LLP said, “but that was all. We didn’t have any trouble getting everything filed on time.”
The problem was with the popular TurboTax and ProSeries tax software, whose users were forced to wait hours for confirmation that their electronic returns had been submitted successfully.
A record number of returns from both individual taxpayers and accountants started causing delays in the company’s e-filing system early Tuesday, and the problem got worse as the midnight deadline for getting forms to the Internal Revenue Service approached, said Harry Pforzheimer, a company spokesman.
“The amount of filing that has been done today has been absolutely amazing, and we are doing everything we possibly can to expand capabilities of servers,” Pforzheimer said. During times of peak of demand, Intuit was processing 50 to 60 returns per second, he said.
The Mountain View-based company contacted the IRS to alert the agency to the backlog, Pforzheimer said. While stopping short of promising that filers whose returns fail to reach the government before the deadline would not be penalized, he said, “it’s fair to say the IRS understands what the situation is” and would have a statement about the situation Wednesday.
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