IRS 'Direct Pay' Option Not Working on Tax Day (cbsnews.com) 139
An anonymous reader shares a report: Online payments on IRS.gov are partially down. But the government still expects its money. A page on the IRS website that allows taxpayers to make a payment is not working for many as of Tuesday morning. Clicking on "Make a payment" on the payments page redirects the user to a page titled "unplannedOutagePage. Note that your tax payment is due although IRS Direct Pay may not be available," the page notes. UPDATE 04/17/18: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told the Associated Press that online tax filers will get an extension due to today's website outage.
"Your payment is due even though you can't pay us" (Score:3)
I often wonder if these government institutions actually live in the real world.
The common sense thing to do if their payment system is broken would be to postpone the due date for payments!
Re:"Your payment is due even though you can't pay (Score:5, Funny)
Millions of millennials will need to learn cursive writing so that they can fill out a check. The YouTube video for how to address and stamp an envelope will be the first in 2018 with a billion views.
Re: "Your payment is due even though you can't pay (Score:1)
Millions of millennials will need to learn cursive writing so that they can fill out a check.
I don't think you understand what cursive writing is. Or if you do, can you tell us what you think it has to do with writing a check?
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Millions of millennials will need to learn cursive writing so that they can fill out a check.
I don't think you understand what cursive writing is. Or if you do, can you tell us what you think it has to do with writing a check?
You use it to sign your name. I guess you could always just "make your mark" with an X.
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A signature is you writing your name. This can be done with any form of writing. There is no legal requirement for cursive. A signature isn't really for identifying the signer, but rather to signify agreement.
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You may use it to sign your name, but I don't to sign mine.
I heard this argument about teaching cursive (how will children learn to sign things), and thought it was so stupid I changed my signature to be all caps and printing.
I have not had a single issue with it.
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You use it to sign your name.
No, you use it to write text using traditional implements such as quills, dip pens or fountain pens. Quite coincidentally, yes, some people are in the habit of writing their name in regular cursive when asked for a signature.
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But don't sign your checks "XX" because that's kind of girly.
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But don't sign your checks "XX" because that's kind of girly.
"XX" is fine, "XO" is the girly one.
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Female is XX, male is XY [wikipedia.org].
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Millions of millennials will need to learn cursive writing so that they can fill out a check.
I don't think you understand what cursive writing is. Or if you do, can you tell us what you think it has to do with writing a check?
You use it to sign your name. I guess you could always just "make your mark" with an X.
Lots of people use a personal mark. I certainly wouldn't call my signature cursive. Ever since my father berated me about my penmanship of my name in grade school, I looked how he signed his name and have written First letter + long squiggle ever since. Collecting checks for pizza delivery when I was in college, I saw lots of weird signatures, squiggles, and signs, but none of the ones I checked on at work came back as bad. I remember one that was just a weird looping of ovals like from a spyrograph that th
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The illiterate were once allowed to sign with âoeXâ.
Wow, that's a rather complicated string of symbols for someone illiterate.
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Found the millennial who's never written a check.
Outside of a signature, checks are only reason most people use cursive.
Re: "Your payment is due even though you can't pa (Score:1)
Found the millennial who's never written a check.
Outside of a signature, checks are only reason most people use cursive.
Fou d the idiot. I've actually been writing checks for 40 years. In block hand writing, like every single bank had requested me to do so for the last 40 years.
You actually write checks in cursive instead of block? How precious your time must be, snowflake.
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Do you also use crayon?
Re: "Your payment is due even though you can't pa (Score:1)
Found the millennial who's never written a check.
Outside of a signature, checks are only reason most people use cursive.
Google 'check writing' and you will see that all the examples use block, and not cursive. Apart from wikihow and their ripoffs.
Back when there were tellers who had to manually process checks, you would get cursed at for cutting a check in cursive.
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Other than my signature, I have never used cursive to write a check. I haven't used cursive for anything at all since I got out of public school and was no longer required to use it.
I hand write so seldom that it's a miracle my hand printed writing is the slightest bit legible. My signature at best is consistent and unique, I would not call it legible.
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This is why cursive is useless.
All but the best cursive is almost opaque to other (the one that didn't write it) people, the worst pritning is very legible.
Cursive is a very minimal speed inprovement (about 30%).
Schools should drop cursive, and maybe teach shorthand.
Shorthand is also illegible to the non writer, but it is very fast, and is not a useless skill.
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I dunno...if nothing else, it seems to be good training for better eye-hand coordination and exercise...
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I was making a cheap lighthearted millennial joke, don't read too much into it. Of course you can fill out a check without cursive - but back when schools taught such things, they taught us to fill checks out in cursive because it was harder to alter. The intent of my post was a sarcastic response to the parent, who seemed to think that the alternative ways to pay the IRS were onerous enough to warrant extending the deadline. Anyone born prior to 1990 would probably just whip out their checkbook and address
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Millions of millennials will need to learn cursive writing so that they can fill out a check.
I don't think you understand what cursive writing is. Or if you do, can you tell us what you think it has to do with writing a check?
Ahhh ... I think this is the first time I literally "LOL"ed over an web post!
It can't be real! It's too perfect!
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It's typically used to fill out a check because it is hard to alter. It's also used for your signature, unless you are a millenial in which case your hand would cramp up writing that many letters. ;p
Re: "Your payment is due even though you can't pay (Score:2)
You may be overestimating how many people live in the US or how many of them are millennials.
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Um, there are 83 million millennials. In theory, they should all be paying taxes. Even if only 2% of them waited until the last minute to file, we're in the millions.
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Indeed it is. Which is why I say millions of millennials. The billion views? That's because they need to watch it several times, then return to the page dozens of times to reply to comments.
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I was under the impression that if a single user watches a video twice that it only counts as one "view".
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I mean, we're digging pretty deep into a joke now - but Googling around it sounds like they are "views" and not "unique views". They take some measures to fight fraud, but a single person watching a video multiple times ostensibly counts as multiple views.
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Touche.
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This misses the whole point that this system failed on the due date for a mandatory payment. It also misses the fact that a lot of people don't bother with having printed checks any longer. It even further misses the point that not everyone can just bail from work and run to the post office to get that postmark and still have a job. While we crack wise about cursive, they've been raised paperless by the same schlubbs that are giving them shit for being raised paperless.
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This misses the whole point that this system failed on the due date for a mandatory payment.
While I agree that is a hilarious example of a government IT fail, there are other ways to pay. If you waited until the last minute to file and your only consequence is that you need to run an extra errand I'd say you're still doing pretty well. You can always send it in the next day and suffer the practically non-existent penalty. Hell, my state tax is going in a day late because I forgot to have my wife sign it and she won't be home in time. If they come at me for the fine it will be $0.02.
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Most people have had 3 months in which this payment could have been completed. And if they're able to spend their day at the office doing taxes, they can probably also bail from that same work long enough to go to the post office.
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If you owe taxes, and deliberately fill your W4 to reduce witholdings, and spend all that money, then you deserve to be taken to the cleaners by IRS. I have no mercy for tax cheats.
Tax fight is with legislators, not with IRS.
There is Another (Score:2)
The IRS service may be down but services that let you ay via credit card (like pay1040.com) are still functioning.
But yes, it's pretty bad for the fee-less IRS service to die today, they should publicly announce an extension to pay until the next full day the service is up.
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Re: "Your payment is due even though you can't pay (Score:2)
"How to Wipe Your Ass" - 2034
"How to Wipe Properly" - 2035
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Millions of millennials will need to learn cursive writing so that they can fill out a check. The YouTube video for how to address and stamp an envelope will be the first in 2018 with a billion views.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] 315k views already.
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Hahaha, the comments are precious.
The existence of this makes me feel better about using YouTube to figure out how to repair my appliances.
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Oh yeah. Those comments rival some Amazon reviews.
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Most Snake People were born before the internet was a thing, and have sent plenty of personal letters growing up. And learned cursive in 3rd grade like everyone else. You're thinking of The Zolom's Children.
I was just trying to trivialize the inconvenience - don't take the lighthearted yank at the millennials too seriously.
Re: "Your payment is due even though you can't pay (Score:2)
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No, they'll call it "take the envelope challenge!" and it will be delivered by a 20-something with the enthusiasm of a crack addict finding a 50 dollar bill and overdubbed with pulsing royalty-free music.
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Dude, the USPS is real world. Write a check, put it in an envelope, and take it to your local post office. They'll even sell you the envelope and stamp if you need one.
So.....you mean like an email, but on paper? How do you use the loopy thing to physically attach the check to the envelope?
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Your either forgetting or are unaware that many people these days that have a checking account don't actually have a checkbook to write checks. I haven't had one in over 10 years, nearing 15!
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So go to the bank and have them print you some temporary checks. There might be a fee, but it beats IRS penalties.
Then next time, learn to adult and get some checks, stamps, and envelopes. Not a lot of pity here or from the IRS for someone who is so irresponsible that they aren't prepared for alternative ways to get through life when their precious technology fails.
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Wow, someone has an entitled 50 year old oak tree that's slowly grown up their ass. The reason I don't have a checkbook is the fact that I threw the previous two away without ever writing one check. Yes, you can go to the bank and get a check if you find out the IRS website is down before 4pm. But, if you wait until the last minute to pay, and a lot of people do, you may very well be screwed when you get home from work, go to pay the IRS and find that their payment processor is down. Now, in the tax offi
Re: "Your payment is due even though you can't pay (Score:2)
learn to adult
Three most amusing words ever posted to Slashdot.
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What I don't get is: Why are so many people so lazy about getting their taxes done? All the necessary paperwork should be in a person's hands by mid-February, that gives people two full months to get off their butts and get it done. If they wait till the last minute out of laziness, well, technical difficulties forcing them to go outside their comfort zone and actually mail a check is the price they may just have to pay.
It's quite common for
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because i don't want to pay the fucking slavers till the last day possible!
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Why do people think that completing work prior to a deadline, when there is no incentive or bonus to doing so, is laziness? If it's done before the deadline, it counts the same as the one done two months ago.
And the price for those in charge of the systems e
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Basic economics, the longer the money is in your savings account, the more money you earn in interest. Also, after Christmas, it takes a few months to save up enough to pay the Obama white slavery tax (health care tax penalty,) thankfully that will be removed next year.
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No, they live in the real world. If you ask any accountant, they say to never pay on the due date - you always pay a few days ahead because you know what? Crap happens. Systems go down, and if they're going to go down, as someone who works in the IT field, you know it WILL go down when you need it most.
So every accounts
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I often wonder if these government institutions actually live in the real world.
The common sense thing to do if their payment system is broken would be to postpone the due date for payments!
"Common Sense" doesn't usually have much to do with whether or not a solution will work in the real world, because even simple problems can have complex constraints. I am not sure offhand where the due date is set. If a delay requires a change to a law or federal regulation it may not be quite that simple.
It also looks like credit card payments are still working (albeit with transaction fees).
Gaming the system (Score:2)
I often wonder if these government institutions actually live in the real world.
More than you might think. They are well aware of the ways in which people try to game the system. If all it took to get the date postponed was to take down a website how long do you think it would be before some black hats started attacking every IRS webpage they could find?
The common sense thing to do if their payment system is broken would be to postpone the due date for payments!
Or you can just request a deferral. It's easy and you just have to drop it in the mail by today. Or not be lazy and wait until the last possible second. If you roll the dice on doing things last minute that is on you and isn't the
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Wrong, you can get an automatic extension, but you still have to pay anything you owe by April 15 (or 17).
Late filing (Score:2)
Wrong, you can get an automatic extension, but you still have to pay anything you owe by April 15 (or 17).
Not exactly true. There are penalties for not paying by that date but you don't actually have to do it. You also don't have to pay the complete amount either and you can set up a payment agreement with the IRS if you are having trouble paying. And you can pay the amount owed by phone, online, or by sending a check with the appropriately dated post mark. Not that hard.
In any case the point is that if you wait until the last possible day and things go sideways you really only have yourself to blame.
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No, the sensible thing to do is to drop a check in the mail. As long as it's postmarked by the due date, you're considered to be paying on time.
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If you want to bitch, bitch about the fact that the greed of HR Block and related agencies have created a world where we have to waste money and time just to make these corporate monsters rich. For the vast majority of us, the IRS could prefill our returns, state out refund amounts, and deposit it to the same accounts we used last year.
Re: "Your payment is due even though you can't pay (Score:2)
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A group of thugs comes to you and says, "Your money, or your life."
You think, "Surely government will protect me from these gangsters!"
Come to find out, the gangsters AREA the government, and it's tax day.
Because you haven't in any way benefited, even tangentially, from things funded by taxes......
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pay the man (Score:1)
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or else...
The check is in the mail....
IF you owe the IRS money, why would you not just write a check and mail it to them? IF it's postmarked before it's due, you paid on time. They don't charge you extra for a check (assuming it doesn't bounce) and you keep your money for a few extra days where it might just draw interest (assuming you have interest earning checking.)
IF the IRS owes you a refund, why on earth didn't you file in February (or the day after you got your W2)?
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A great new source of government income (Score:2)
fine (issue penalties) to people for paying late!
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postmarked, you know the way it works now.
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postmarked, you know the way it works now.
Possibly not. They're an AC and they probably don't know how American taxes work in Russia.
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fine (issue penalties) to people for paying late!
As long as the fine payment system stays down too, you'll be alright ...
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[A great new source of government income]...fine (issue penalties) to people for paying late!
To be fair, April 15th is the cutoff date for filing return forms and any other appropriate forms along with any taxes owed (besides any you're filing proper forms to defer). It's not like April 15th is a surprise or that there is not adequate time. According to the law it's the taxpayer's responsibility to make certain the required forms are filed and any taxes due are paid on time. I'm pretty sure the ToS on the IRS "Direct Pay" web page says, in so many boilerplate words, essentially the same thing and t
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Yeah, we'll call it a "convenience," with a TOS designed to save the government from its own irresponsibility, stupidity, and procrastination.
Now stop c
Re:A great new source of government income (Score:4, Interesting)
To be fair, April 15th is the cutoff date for filing return forms and any other appropriate forms along with any taxes owed (besides any you're filing proper forms to defer). It's not like April 15th is a surprise or that there is not adequate time.
I did our taxes a month ago, using the government's "Free Fillable Tax Forms" website [freefilefi...eforms.com]. Also using that site, I scheduled our payment to be withdrawn from our bank account today. The return was accepted by the government.
Now as of right now (11:46am PST), the government hasn't pulled the money out of our account. I don't know if this is because of the outage or not - but in the past it's happened early in the day.
But, in any case, I did not wait until the last minute, and I used a 100% IRS-approved-and-managed system... yet this still may affect me. I would argue that I should not face any penalties if my pre-scheduled payment is delayed by a government server outage.
(to be fair, we have no idea whether or not the IRS will apply late penalties related to payment delays caused by this outage).
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So use the US mail. (Score:2)
There is this service, controlled by the government, that delivers letters. Letters from anywhere in the USA to anywhere else in the USA. It even delivers letters to and from other countries.
Amazingly, as long as your tax payment is postmarked on or before tax day, the IRS considers it on time.
So get out your check book (assuming you remember what this is and have one), write a check and mail it.
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I hear that many post offices in major cities will even be open LATE to accept your return/payment. In Dallas, the main post office has accepted tax returns up until midnight making the late filing at 11:59 PM central on tax day possible.http://about.usps.com/news/state-releases/tx/2017/tx_2017_0413b.htm
Good luck!
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The problem is players like Amazon abusing this service. They're literally treating the USPS as their "Delivery Boy". As if the USPS had nothing better to do than spend all day making deliveries.
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The problem is players like Amazon abusing this service. They're literally treating the USPS as their "Delivery Boy". As if the USPS had nothing better to do than spend all day making deliveries.
I'm sorry but I can't tell if you are joking or really upset that services think that USPS should spend all day making deliveries/
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The odds of a young person knowing what a check is and how to use it is low.
The next response is what is a money order?
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And next is what is money? :P
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Isn't it obvious?
Assuming the IRS would accept it (and they won't), The problem will be making sure the transaction is completed in time....
At least this one is unplanned (Score:2)
Government websites like this usually have planned maintenance windows right in the middle of whenever you need to use them. They also tend to make the login process more arduous if you haven't logged in recently, which you always deal with because you haven't actually needed to use them since the last quarter or year's tax date.
Oh, and if you have to do password recovery because of this? Good luck, you may have just missed your opportunity for on-time payment.
At least you can just "mail a check" to the IRS
You can do it earlier (Score:2)
This year, I couldn't resist sending all tax money on Friday, April 13. That's four days early, which is highly unlikely to cause a problem for a taxpayer.
IRS Fault (Score:1)
Note that your tax payment is due although IRS Direct Pay may not be available,"
Sorry, what? If their payment infrastructure is down, then any lack of payment is the IRS' fault until they have it back up and have provided an extension for the number of days there was an outage during the expected times that a payment could be made....
The government will have no defensible basis to claim that anybody failed to pay, when the payment was due during days when IRS' ability to accept the payments w
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... an easy stance to take on /. . Arguing that in front of an auditor, well you have more kahunas than I.
Pages 74-75 of the instructions [irs.gov] offer a half-dozen ways to pay. As long as at least one is available, I am pretty sure I can guess how that discussion would go.
About My Refund (Score:2)
I'm due a refund (as I have for ever so many years now). I must've missed the part that covers the IRS Direct Paying _me_.
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If you get a refund of $1200, that means you overpaid by $100/month. IF you are lucky, your bank will pay you 1% on your savings account. If you reduce your withholding by $100/month, at the end of the year you will have earned a whopping $5! Woo-hoo! Where will you spend all that?
Who cares? It costs money to use it (Score:2)
It costs more money to use the service (1.82%) than you get back in rewards points on your credit card. Anyone who uses this needs to give me financial power-of-attorney because I will manage it better... for a nominal service fee.
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If you use the Chase Freedom card and Paypal option on these sites you are getting back 5 points each of which is worth 1.25 AA miles which are worh 1.5 cent each so you get 10% back and pay 1.82%. How about you giving me a financial POA
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Well, does that let you float the money for a month or does it do the automatic withdrawal from your bank account? And big whoop about air miles. Air miles are scam to begin with. Can't get any flight you want and any seat you want and it's not really dollar-for-dollar equal. ;-)
And why would I want to give you a piece of ass?
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POA=Power of Attorney but you knew that
The Ultimate miles you get from a Chase card can be transferred to air miles but they can also be used through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal to buy cash tickets with no blackout dates with 1.5 cent per point (if you have the Chase Reserve, 1.25 if you have the Chase Preferred).
Air miles are valuable to folks who like to travel. if you dont like to travel this might not be for you
The IRS stand is correct (Score:2)
It is very much possible enemies of IRS, both foreign and domestic have a hand in this down time.
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A check attached to the return... is not vulnerable to denial of service attacks.
It happens. Sometimes, the IRS even offers filing and payment extensions [irs.gov] to those impacted.
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They do:
https://www.freefilefillablefo... [freefilefi...eforms.com]