NEW YORK — A planned computer server outage over the holiday weekend has gone awry for the Internal Revenue Service Tuesday, and the agency is having trouble bringing the system back into operation.
The glitch comes four days before the deadline for filing 2009 returns for taxpayers who got extensions in April.
So far, the shutdown of the IRS "modern e-file" system doesn't appear to be causing huge problems. It appears to involve only the updated version of the e-filing system. The one in use for years remains in operation, and large tax-prep companies like H&R Block and Intuit's TurboTax said their programs will default to the older version.
The IRS expects up to 10 million returns on extension.