TurboTax's electronic filing overloads at the last minute

Intuit confirmed on Tuesday evening that a deluge of last-minute filing had overloaded the electronic filing system used in its popular TurboTax software.

"Intuit is working with the IRS and has notified them that throughput on our electronic filing system was not what we expected, resulting in a system slowdown," the company said in a note on its Web site. "We encourage customers to continue trying to e-file as we continue to work on the issue."

The note claimed that TurboTax customers should "rest assured that their returns will be accepted as timely filed."

Also, my own attempt in TurboTax to check at 11 p.m. PT on the status of an already-filed tax return was met with this message: "We are having temporary connection difficulties. Please try to connect again later."

Intuit recommends that its customers check back after 1 p.m. PT Wednesday.

One of our readers, C. Bennett from Texas, sent News.com an e-mail message saying: "The failure of Turbotax's electronic filing system on the most critical tax day of the year is a setback for e-filing in general and for TurboTax in particular."