Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. (Photo: AP)
The Treasury Department will grant extra time to U.S. taxpayers who have been unable to submit their returns electronically after a computer malfunction disrupted the IRS website.
"We'll make sure taxpayers have extensions once the system comes up to make sure they can use it and it in no way impacts people paying their taxes," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters following a Tax Day event in New Hampshire, according to the Associated Press.
Every year the IRS processes more than 120 million tax returns that arrive by mid-April and spits back some $300 billion in refunds. Last year, about 90 percent of returns submitted by April 21 were e-filed, according to IRS data. Tax Day is on April 17 this year, since April 15 was a Sunday and April 16 was a holiday in Washington.
"We are still assessing the underlying issue," Bruce Friedland, a spokesman for the IRS said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. "All indications point to this being a hardware-related issue, not other factors."
The IRS is unable to accept information transmitted from software providers, David Kautter, acting commissioner of the IRS, said after testifying at a congressional hearing on Tuesday.
"On my way over here this morning, I was told a number of systems are down at the moment," Kautter said during the hearing. The problem was discovered in the early morning hours between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., according to Kautter.
The systems that are malfunctioning include e-file and direct pay, which allows taxpayers to pay what they owe through their bank accounts, Friedland said.
Alert Message
An alert message pops up when users select "Bank Account (Direct Pay)" on the agency's website; it says the service is currently unavailable. The same message appears when choosing to apply for a payment plan or view account information.
