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Income Tax

IRS to Shut Down Some Services before Oct. 15 Tax Extension Deadline

The Internal Revenue Service has announced that a planned power outage will cause some services to be unavailable this weekend (Oct. 11-14), which may affect some of the million-plus tax filers, and their tax professionals, who file extended personal inco

Oct. 12, 2014

The Internal Revenue Service has announced that a planned power outage will cause some services to be unavailable this weekend (Oct. 11-14), which may affect some of the million-plus tax filers, and their tax professionals, who file extended personal income tax returns (Form 1040) each year.

The annual power outage, which the agency says is required for necessary maintenance, began at 5 p.m. EDT on Saturday, Oct. 11, and is expected to last until 5 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, Oct. 14.

While April 15 is the deadline most U.S. taxpayers remember, the IRS allows any taxpayer to receive an automatic six month extension if they request it. That means Oct. 15 is the second biggest deadline of each year, when it comes to personal income taxes.

The IRS services that will be affected include:

  • e-Services transcript delivery, TIN matching and e-file applications
  • Modernized e-file and the legacy e-file systems, including MeF production and Assurance Testing

The nation’s taxing agency is advising tax professionals to “refrain from accessing the MeF Production or ATS to transmit business/individual tax returns, retrieve acknowledgements or submit any other service requests.”

The outage is definitely striking a neve with some income tax preparers, particularly that the IRS says this is a “planned” outage that the IRS’ informaiton technology department decided to commence immediately before an important tax deadline.

Professional tax preparers can get more information from their tax software provider: