IRS extends tax deadline to midnight for TurboTax customers

Washington (DC) - The Internal Revenue Service announced late yesterday that it will waive late filing fees for the hundreds of thousands of TurboTax customers who faced delays in submitting their returns online.

TurboTax software creator Intuit said it experienced more than twice the amount of e-filers as it did last year, with huge peaks in the last couple hours of the April 17 deadline. At one point, returns were being submitted at a constant rate of 60 per second.

"Intuit product users who were unable to file their returns through the company’s servers Tuesday should e-file as soon as possible. The IRS will not apply late filing penalties to taxpayers who were affected by this problem," said the IRS in an official statement. The government body has set a new deadline for these customers of midnight tonight.

The server problems caused the TurboTax online message boards to light up with complaints, with some users threatening to sue Intuit if they had to pay late fees. A tardy tax filing of just a few minutes can cause an excess charge of at least 5% of the taxes that were not paid on time.

Intuit, which owns about 70% of the tax software market share, said it is working on making sure the same problem does not occur again next year.