IRS extends filing deadline to Wednesday, April 18th amid computer problems

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Great news for procrastinators: you have another day to file your taxes. The IRS announced late Tuesday that it would extend the deadline to Wednesday, April 18th.

No paperwork is needed to get the extension.

The announcement comes after the IRS website for making payments and gaining access to other key services crashed amid the filing flood. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin described it as a "high-volume technical issue."

The systems went down around 11:50 pm PT on Monday, and appeared to be back to normal late Tuesday.

"This is the busiest tax day of the year, and the IRS apologizes for the inconvenience this system issue caused for taxpayers," Acting IRS Commissioner David Kautter said in a statement. "The IRS appreciates everyone's patience during this period. The extra time will help taxpayers affected by this situation."

The agency did not say how many people were affected by the outage. But last year, about 5 million tax returns were filed on the final day of the traditional tax season.

The IRS said that at this point, the problem appears to be a hardware issue. It provided no further details on the cause or severity of the problem

Former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen warned last year of a possible system failure, due in part to underfunding of the agency. Among the areas that he said were underfunded were the agency's aging information systems.

Democrats quickly blamed federal budget cuts to the IRS as part of the problem.

"We know for certain the IRS's lack of funding is compounding these kinds of problems," said Sen. Ron Wyden Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.

Republicans have targeted the agency for budget cuts since taking control of the House in 2011, relenting a bit this year to help the IRS implement last year's overhaul of the tax code.

___

The Associated Press contributed to this report.