Don't Mess With Taxes

On Tuesday, the IRS learned to be careful what it asks for.

The agency has been pleading with us for years to e-file.

And on April 17, so many TurboTax users e-filed that the company's servers were unable to handle the tax crush.

That meant that the returns of hundreds of thousands of taxpayers technically didn't make the deadline, putting them into a penalty and interest paying situation.

But don't panic if you were one of the unintentionally past-due filers. The IRS says that taxpayers who weren't able to e-file Tuesday using Intuit software products (TurboTax, its Free File version and the company's commercial software packages ProSeries and Lacerte) have until midnight today, April 19, to get their returns done.

Since the IRS got what it's been wanting, millions of us e-filing, it's the least it can do.

Intuit officials said that the problem was caused by a record number of e-filed returns on April 17. As the midnight deadline neared, the company was processing 50 to 60 returns per second. More details on the chaos in this story.

Even without the delayed TurboTax returns, the IRS reports that through Tuesday, more than 75 million returns were filed electronically, shattering last year's e-filing record of 73.2 million.

Now I've been a final day filer before. In fact, last year I didn't hit the enter button on my PC to e-file our 1040 until early in the evening of that tax-due day. But I was ignoring my own advice of not to wait until the last minute to e-file.

In that case, I was specifically thinking of the possibility of computer problems, like the stupid machine freezing up, forcing you to reboot just minutes before midnight. I don't know about you but that always seems to happen to me when I'm in the middle of any computer project that has a definite, and rapidly approaching, deadline.

But after this e-filing snafu, I'm going to listen to myself next year. Now if I could just get the hubby to do so, too, and when it comes to everything, not just taxes!

More special date changes: Today was to have been the extended deadline for taxpayers in the Northeastern United States to get their taxes done. They got the extra time because of the severe storm that hit the region on Monday.

But weather recovery woes are continuing, with repairs taking longer than expected in many areas. So the IRS is giving those folks another week. Now they have until April 26 to file their taxes.

On a more tragic note, the IRS is giving special consideration to all affected by Monday's shootings at Virginia Tech University.

All victims, their families, emergency workers who responded to the situation and all university students and employees now have until Oct. 15 to file and pay their taxes.

To get the six-month extension, taxpayers should call the IRS toll-free at (866) 562-5227 and identify themselves before they file and or make payment.