Late filers hoping to file and pay their taxes in the late hours of Monday night faced major disruptions to the Internal Revenue Service website. The IRS website experienced a huge slowdown on Tax Day, which fell on April 18 this year, with many late filers potentially left facing penalties if they were unable to process their returns on the website before midnight.
IRS Service Outages
IRS website users logged outages throughout the day on Monday, with most people struggling to make payments and file their returns at 12 noon.
The number of outage reports peaked and troughed throughout the rest of the day, gradually reducing but spiking again at 11:46pm, according to Downdetector. It suggests that large numbers of Americans were attempting to file their tax returns around lunchtime, with many remembering to make the filing in the final minutes of April 18th – only to be met by more outages.
Fox Business reported that many users reported seeing an error message on the IRS website that read, “We are unable to complete your request due to technical difficulties.”
Other users reported that they were unable to make payments or log in to the website.
While most users will likely have been able to make the website at some point later in the day, some late filers may have missed the deadline by way of the website crashing.
Something to Remember for Next Year
Under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, digital payment service users will be required to file additional paperwork if they received payments of $600 or more.
The legislation requires that all digital payment services, describes as Third-Party Settlement Organizations, will be required to inform the IRS of payments of $600 or more. This means business owners who receive payments via PayPal, Venmo, or similar online payment services may face a paperwork burden previously not required.
Before the 2021 legislation, taxpayers would receive a 1099-K notification if they received over 200 business transactions that amounted to $20,000 over the course of the year. Now, if payments exceed $600, they are automatically reported to the IRS, and more businesses will receive the 1099-K document.
To avoid delays next year, small business owners should ensure that their record keeping is maintained properly throughout the year.
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
