With just a few days before Tax Day, cracks are showing at the IRS. Millions of taxpayers are expected to file their federal income tax returns by the end of the day on April 15, 2025, with millions more expected to file for an extension. It’s not the ideal time for mistakes to appear on the IRS website, but that’s precisely what is happening. Potentially confusing errors are popping up on the site, including one that impacts taxpayers filing for an extension.
Taxpayers who need more time to file can apply for an extension. If you make the request on time—on or before Tax Day—you will have six more months to get your return to the IRS and not be subject to the late-filing penalty (this year, with an extension, you’ll have until October 15, 2025, to timely file a return). There are a few ways to file for an extension, including paying the tax due on the IRS website.
The problem? The extension payment date for taxpayers who log into the IRS website is showing as incorrect. While payment should be made by April 15, 2025, taxpayers who log in to pay see an April 22, 2025, due date. The site says, “Your payment is due on April 22, 2025, regradless of filing for an extension.” (Yes, the ‘regradless’ typo is on the IRS site, too).
Errors appear in other spots on the website, too, including misidentifying the amended tax form as Form 104X (it’s Form 1040X) that was recently “filled” instead of “filed.”
Account holders report that previously filed and processed tax forms (for tax years 2022 and 2023) are showing as now being processed even though those returns have already been processed. (I verified the errors by logging into my account.)
The errors prompted one tax professional to quip, “This is feeling like the website is spoofed and your payments will go straight to Russia.” It would be funny if it weren’t true.
The errors were first called to my attention on Thursday—and numerous tax professionals confirmed the original problems and suggested that there were even more. One tax professional reported that the installment agreement option for making payments over five years (for a total of 60 months) only allowed taxpayers to make payments for five months.
Another pointed out that the tab for searching for charities had been removed altogether from the home page—if you’re looking to confirm charitable status, you’ll have to perform a search to find the page first. (If you’re looking, it’s here.)
It’s a bold choice to make changes to the IRS website, especially on the payment end, days before Tax Day, prompting questions about why that might have happened. It’s not clear when the changes were made—so far, there’s been no answer. However, on Wednesday, Elon Musk tweeted out on X (formerly Twitter) that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had made a fix to the IRS website:
It reads, “On the http://IRS.gov website, the “log in” button was not in the top right on the navbar like it is on most websites. It was weirdly placed in the middle of the page below the fold. An IRS engineer explained that the *soonest* this change could get deployed is July 21… 103 days from now. This engineer worked with the DOGE team to delete the red tape and accomplished the task in 71 minutes. See before/after pictures below. There are great people at the IRS, who are simply being strangled by bureaucracy.”
The “log in” button that Musk was referring to is the button that gives taxpayers access to their online accounts. For the most part, the reported errors are linked to those accounts.
It’s not clear whether the changes and the errors are related or whether DOGE had access to other parts of the IRS website. A request made asking more information was not answered.
The errors have been reported to the IRS. In a statement issued to Forbes, Scott Artman, CPA, the CEO of the National Association of Tax Professionals (NATP), the largest nonprofit organization that serves individuals specializing in tax preparation, noted, “Tax professionals rely on accurate, timely guidance from the IRS, especially in the final days leading up to the deadline. As soon as this issue was confirmed, we brought it to the IRS’s attention and have been assured that it has been communicated to the appropriate internal teams with a request for prompt resolution. We are hopeful the IRS will address the issue quickly to avoid any confusion for taxpayers and preparers.”
As of March 28, 2025, the IRS had received 89,550,000—the agency expects to receive 140 million returns by April 15, 2025.
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