Taxpayers waiting until the last minute to file their taxes will receive an extra day after the IRS spent most of Tuesday, the deadline for filing taxes, fixing technical glitches on its website.
Parts of the IRS payment system were not working for several hours on Tuesday, sending people who hadn't filed into a panic. Those services were restored Tuesday evening, according to a statement from the IRS.
The IRS "direct pay" option, which is a free service allowing taxpayers to transfer funds directly from a bank account to the IRS, and a "payment plan" option were both unavailable for several hours on Tuesday.
“This is the busiest tax day of the year, and the IRS apologizes for the inconvenience this system issue caused for taxpayers,” said David Kautter, acting IRS commissioner. “The IRS appreciates everyone’s patience during this period. The extra time will help taxpayers affected by this situation.”
Taxpayers affected by the technical glitch won't have to do anything to take advantage of the extra day.
While the outage was an inconvenience, it was still possible to pay with a debit or credit card. However, both those options tack on a fee of a couple of dollars for a debit card transaction and an additional percentage of the total bill for those paying with a credit card, adding to the joy of paying taxes.
The old fashioned option of sending a paper check is also still an option, as long as it's postmarked with the April 17 due date.
The technical glitch didn't stop Twitter from flipping out on the IRS for not having everything run smoothly on the most important tax day of the year.