IRS Statement on System Outage

The IRS announced it resumed processing individual and business tax returns at approximately 5 p.m. Thursday following resolution of its system outage. Many of the tools and applications came up earlier on Thursday morning, including “Where’s My Refund” on IRS.gov.

“IRS teams worked throughout the night and around the clock on this system outage,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said. “Our processing systems are back in business. Taxpayers should see little, if any, impact on their tax returns or refunds. We apologize for the inconvenience this caused, and we appreciate the support and patience from taxpayers as well as our partners in the tax community and state revenue departments.”

The IRS emphasized that taxpayers do not need to take any additional steps or action due to the outage, including people who filed just before or during the outage. Throughout this period, taxpayers were able to continue to send their tax returns to their e-file provider; these companies have already started sending these tax returns into the IRS.

Taxpayers who have received a specific refund date from the “Where’s My Refund?” tool on IRS.gov should not be affected by the outage. The IRS reminds taxpayers that many variables factor into processing of tax refunds, including fraud prevention efforts, but we continue to anticipate that nine out of 10 taxpayers will receive their refunds within 21 days after being accepted by the IRS. In addition, the IRS reminds taxpayers that IRS.gov remains the best place to check for information on refunds. Additional information is available at: https://www.irs.gov/Refunds/What-to-Expect-for-Refunds-This-Year

The IRS is continuing to examine the underlying cause of the outage yesterday as well as monitoring any follow-up issues.  It's important to note that at this time this situation appears to be a hardware failure.