Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Turbo Tax Melts Down on Tax Day

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the procrastinators-in-a-pinch dept.

Raven17 writes "Turbo Tax by Intuit completely melted down under the load from last minute filers. Some people have been having problems as long as 24 hours already. I surrendered 2 hours before the East Coast deadline and schlepped on down to the Post Office."

13 of 554 comments (clear)

  1. Back up at the wire by kannibal_klown · · Score: 5, Informative

    My mom used TurboTax (I got stuck w/ TaxCut this year). Anyway, she said it came back up just a few minutes before midnight. People were flipping out.

    Personally, I did mine back in February.

    1. Re:Back up at the wire by Asphalt · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Um, because they are getting paid YOUR TAX DOLLARS to open the letter?

      Actually they aren't. Nobody working for the government gets paid with "YOUR TAX DOLLARS".

      They get paid with Federal Reserve Notes well before you remit any of your earnings. And they will get paid whether you remit anything or not. Because there is a printing press that will give it to them regardless.

      Your tax Reserve Notes go to the Federal Reserve to prevent devaluation of the currency. And since the "money" is created out of thin air, that's really the only reason you pay taxes.

      The more dollars the general population has, the less a dollar is worth. So taxation serves to remove as many dollars out of circulation as possible, thus supporting the fiat currency.

      When you pay FEDERAL taxes, you are not directly paying for any employees or programs ... as the money is simply printed and given to the Federal Government on demand, to distribute to whomever they want. So why, if money is printed on demand, does the Federal Reserve need YOUR money? They can create as much as they want. They don't need yours.

      The reason is value. The more money YOU have, the less *value* your neighbor's money has and the government's money has.

      Federal taxation doesn't pay for anything, it simply removes monetary supply from the hands of the populace. Less supply = more demand = curtailed inflation.

      In short, your are not paying for anything with taxes. You are just supporting the perceived value of paper and ink that has no intrinsic value in and of itself.

  2. Only Fools Wait Until The Last Minute by NeverVotedBush · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It was basically a manual DNS attack. With so many waiting until the last minute, what do people expect? File at least a day before the deadline. What difference does a day's worth of interest make on the average IRS tax bill? And if people are so concerned about a day's worth of interest, print the damn return and mail it with a check. That way you get a few more days of interest.

    I just don't understand the dorks that wait so long they have no options.

    1. Re:Only Fools Wait Until The Last Minute by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 5, Informative

      It was basically a manual DNS attack. With so many waiting until the last minute, what do people expect? File at least a day before the deadline. What difference does a day's worth of interest make on the average IRS tax bill? And if people are so concerned about a day's worth of interest, print the damn return and mail it with a check. That way you get a few more days of interest.

      All true, but the fact that people wait until the deadline is not news. If you're going to get into the online tax-prep business, you'd better have a stout server. This kind of failure can kill a business.

    2. Re:Only Fools Wait Until The Last Minute by powermacx · · Score: 5, Funny

      Losers. I did my taxes last year. - Homer

    3. Re:Only Fools Wait Until The Last Minute by Maximum+Prophet · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm using my poor memory here but there are something like 180 million filers, 60% of which use Tax software or professional help (almost all the professionals use Tax software)

      TurboTax should know it's market share, let's pretend it's 75%. That's 180,000,000 * .60 * .75 * .20 = 16.2 million on the last day. Let's say most, 75%, wait until the last half of the day, that's 8.1 million in the last 12 hours. That's 187 per second.

      On NPR they gave a figure that the TurboTax servers were processing like 40 per second.

      I do peak load extimation for Unix servers for a living. Somebody at TurboTax screwed up big time, real big time. They should have doubled the number of servers they thought they might have needed. They should have contracted with a company like Google to cache the returns, then process them batchwise as fast as they could.

      --
      All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
    4. Re:Only Fools Wait Until The Last Minute by sloveless · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You don't get penalized for filing a federal return late if you're getting a refund. A few years back, before I started filing electronically, I prepared my taxes, noticed I was getting a nice little refund, and promptly failed to put it in the damn mail. It was December before my lazy butt realized I hadn't received my check. (No, I'm not exaggerating.) So I mailed it. The IRS promptly issued my refund PLUS INTEREST! Granted, it was a crappy rate and I would have been better off putting that money in a savings account. Regardless, no penalties.

    5. Re:Only Fools Wait Until The Last Minute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      They should have contracted with a company like Google to cache the returns

      Excellent, then my tax return could be stored along side my e-mail, calendar, documents, searches, and every website I've visited that uses Double-click or Google ad services ... in fact, can't Google just fill out my returns automatically now, with the info they have?

    6. Re:Only Fools Wait Until The Last Minute by GoRK · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I didn't get the figures for my last 1099 until YESTERDAY. Kinda makes filing hard ya know.


      No it doesn't. They missed the filing deadline; not you. What you are supposed to do here is timely file your 1040 without that information then re-file your 1040 when you get the additional information then either pay the difference with interest or claim the difference as a refund (in many cases this is with interest too). Optionally you can include estimated tax payments on your first 1040 filing if you want to avoid paying interest when you file again. Your final easy option is to file form 4868 for an extension along with your estimated payment. If you expect a refund the best thing is to file 1040 twice so you can go ahead and get your money back. If you expect to pay, the 4868 is much simpler.

  3. As a Hog Farmer by ReidMaynard · · Score: 5, Funny

    I shipped my 15% (30 hogs) early, to avoid problems just like this

    --
    -- www.globaltics.net

    Political discussion for a new world

  4. It's so unfair by Aaron_Pike · · Score: 5, Funny

    If only there were some way to file in March, or even February. But that could only happen if employers had a deadline to send out W-2 forms by like the end of January.

  5. Re:Netcraft confirms by __aaanwh8370 · · Score: 5, Informative

    TurboTax.com does not host the online TurboTax application - that's the brochure-ware for turbotax. Those servers also do not host Intuit's electronic filing services (which are hosted indenpendently from turbo tax online as well).

    The TurboTax web app is hosted @ www.turbotaxonline.com and still runs on Solaris (http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.turb otaxonline.com)

  6. 2-day Extension by flamingnight · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you were affected by the storm that hit parts of the East Coast over the weekend, the IRS has granted a 2-day tax extension. Just write "April 16 Storm" on your return.