The IRS has temporarily stopped accepting tax returns from its e-file system after a "hardware failure" caused several of the agency's tax processing systems to go down Wednesday.
The IRS did not elaborate on the source of the issue, which may not be resolved until sometime Thursday, according to a statement.
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Though the IRS website is still up and running, "Where's My Refund," which helps people track the status of their refunds, and other online tools were also affected by the outage. The agency said in a statement Wednesday that it was working on a fix.
Several of our systems are not currently operating, including our modernized e-file system and a number of other related systems. The IRS is currently in the process of making repairs and working to restore normal operations as soon as possible. We anticipate some of the systems will remain unavailable until tomorrow.
The IRS remains in close contact with e-file software transmitters and the tax community during this period.
In the meantime, the IRS says people should continue to file their returns normally; e-file providers are holding returns until the IRS gets its e-file system up and running again. Those who have already filed returns won't be affected.
Though the agency is "still assessing the scope of the outage" the IRS said it doesn't expect the issue to cause "major refund disruptions," estimating that most taxpayers will get their refunds within 21 days of filing.