IRS E-file system temporarily shut down

02-04-2016Tax Information

The Internal Revenue Service reported it suffered a "hardware failure" on Wednesday afternoon, which left many of its tax processing systems unavailable Wednesday night, the agency announced in a statement.

The agency stopped accepting electronically filed tax returns because of the problem. The outage could affect refunds, but the agency said it doesn't anticipate "major disruptions."

The IRS is still assessing the scope of the outage and indicates nine out of 10 taxpayers will receive their refunds within 21 days.  The IRS.gov website remains available, but "Where's My Refund" and other services are not working.

The IRS is currently in the process of making repairs and working to restore normal operations as soon as possible.

You can still send your tax information to us; but we have to hold on to the tax returns until the IRS systems are up and running again.

People who have already filed returns don't need to do anything more, the IRS said.