TurboTax Filing Trauma

[Valerie S. Johnson]

By Valerie S. Johnson

Your parents always told you not to wait until the last minute to do your homework, right? Yet this year, even with the deadline for filing taxes extended from the usual April 15 to April 17 (see our related story on January 29, 2007), you procrastinated. Late Tuesday night, you were hunched over your computer, putting the finishing touches on your Form 1040. You tried to file using the TurboTax program … that is, you and several hundred thousand other taxpayers.

Intuit’s popular program was a casualty of its own success. So many individuals and accountants were using TurboTax and Intuit’s other products “ProSeries,” “Lacerte,” and “TurboTax Freedom” that the company’s servers were overloaded on that fateful night. End result? Your worst nightmare: your taxes were not timely filed. Interest and penalties and audits, oh my!

But the IRS granted a reprieve. If you couldn’t e-file using an Intuit product, try again right away. There will be no late filing penalties if you were affected by this problem, provided you file before midnight on Thursday, April 19.

You’re already promising yourself “Next year … I’ll get organized.” Guess what? It’s already next year.