Post by CMF Newsman on Apr 18, 2007 9:26:41 GMT -5
SAN FRANCISCO - A flood of last-minute tax filers swamped the servers of the company that makes the popular TurboTax and ProSeries tax software Tuesday, forcing taxpayers 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 Intuit Inc.'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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